Gearbox CEO responds to Borderlands 4 fans over performance criticisms

After fans took to social media to voice their concerns with the technical performance of Borderlands 4 following its release last week, Gearbox CEO Randy Pitchford has responded to the criticisms in several controversial posts to social media.

The details:

• Shortly after Borderlands 4's release on Friday, many player reviews praised the game but noted that it suffers from poor frame rates, crashes, and other technical issues regardless of the hardware used. Gearbox responded by releasing a PC player guide that included the "best" settings for popular NVIDIA graphics cards, prompting fans to accuse the studio of deflecting blame.
• Over on X, Pitchford has addressed the criticism directly. On Saturday, he shared several tips involving Windows and in-game settings changes that could help improve performance, stating that Gearbox was able to achieve “120fps + on PC in BL4 with three and four year old hardware.” While the advice may be useful, many fans felt disrespected by the CEO’s tone, once again accusing Gearbox of refusing to claim responsibility for the poor performance.
• Pitchford took to X again today in a new thread about the ongoing problem, arguing that PC players have a "lot of tools" to achieve the experience they want, and that it is a "mistake to believe" that high frame rates and resolutions are possible in all games. He claims that only "0.04%" of tickets raised with Gearbox support are about performance issues, with "0.009%" marked as "valid." Pitchford also stated that he believes those who are upset with his comments have "emotions and expectations that [they] feel aren't sufficiently attended to."
• Fans have unsurprisingly responded negatively to Pitchford's tone, leading to even more backlash. “Look man, the stuff you have been tweeting all weekend is true but the game still runs poorly on modern hardware (5090 and 9900X3D in my case),” one fan replied. “Just accept it and fix it. Stop trying to gaslight us saying it isn’t true when other games run fine on [the] same hardware.“

More gaming news:

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• Insomniac's upcoming Wolverine game is reportedly set to arrive next year.