Randy Pitchford has continued his social media push to address complaints about the performance of the PC version of Borderlands 4, telling some disgruntled players they can get a Steam refund if they’re unhappy with the game.
For a long time he was told by everyone in public and in private that he was awesome and perfect, and the greatest game developer, which made him a ton of money and very famous. Now his latest game is failing and his overinflated ego is panicking.
That’s an option, but there were a lot of people involved in making the game. I’m not a fan of collective punishment. They most probably did their best, he’s just a shit spokesperson.
I have come to accept that this is a PR campaign to plaster the name everywhere all over social media and let it worm its way into currently pissed off gamers’ heads for a few months down the line when they’ve calmed down and inevitably buy the fucking thing.
Pitchford is a slimeball. Rarely has a man who is allegedly not an insurance or used-car salesman given off such nakedly scummy vibes.
We need to stop giving free publicity to this little marketing man, and to this poorly optimised, expensive game.
I swear I have no idea why they let him talk. He doesn’t even own the company, surely someone at 2K could just go… you know… shush.
I don’t even think the BL4 thing is that bad, on the face of it. There is really no need to make it worse.
“We have been made aware of some performance issues in certain systems in our new release, we’ll be looking into performance improvements in future patches”. It’s not that hard. At this point just copy/paste whatever the other thousand UE5 games said, go fix the wonky precompilation boot step and stop digging a hole.
Hell, it’s even easier than that, because they have actually pretty much put that out. All he really needed to do was shut up about it.
I honestly don’t know what this “trainwreck” talk is. BL3 was passable. I didn’t like the antagonists, but the game played fine if purples dropped way too much and the new guns weren’t great. People make it seem like it was the Worst Game Ever and I don’t get it. The pre-sequel was hot garbage, but 3 was fine.
It’s hard to consider an 81 on OpenCritic to be a trainwreck. People tend to buy games that review well, especially when it’s a co-op shooter with basically no competition.
Was going to say… Who is out there buying games way outside their machines’ specs? Seems pretty straightforward.
I do get a little annoyed at the folks angry at BL4 using a higher end engine. Like, it does look a lot better than previous iterations. That engine upgrade wasn’t for nothing.
There are a ton of looter shooters floating around that aren’t using the Unreal 5 engine. Just play one of those instead. Hell, go back and play BL1. I’m pretty sure that thing runs on a toaster.
UE5 can run fine on older hardware, but most devs either aren’t given the time to properly optimize or don’t give a fuck about it and would rather rely on upscaling and frame gen tech.
I have a 3090 in a 7800x3d box with 64 gb ram and I had to drop from 7680x2160 to 3840x1080 to get decent framerates. I get better performance in Star Citizen. After a few CTD’s I just went ahead and got a refund.
Sorry but when in the world is that even remotely acceptable that you consider last Gen was outside machine specs when the developers said sure two generations ago is perfectly fine, which btw, holy crap it’s not.
There’s a difference between a game being way outside of your specs because it’s graphically very advanced and your hardware is old, and a game just being unoptimized slop that expects its users to deal with by throwing higher specs at a fixable problem.
I have a brand new 5070ti that can play all kinds of UE5 games with much better graphics than BL4 at 4k resolution with ray tracing at a decent frame rate without relying on frame gen. And I’m in the top few percentiles here.
Apparently the graphics are basically the same as 3, but performance is dog shit on even the best hardware and crashes are unavoidable.
When people complained, he said they need to use AI fake frame and upscale from 720. Which still wasn’t good performance.
It might get fixed later in updates. But this guy is handling so badly he might legitimately be mentally unwell. It’s at the point it’s weird he still has a job
BL4 is running horribly, even on higher end PCs. I have a 4090 and a decent processor, but only getting 80FPS max with a good few settings on low or off and AI frame gen on (I would rather not, but performance is just that bad).
I’ve got a 6800xt and it runs really well on medium settings. Looks pretty good as well. Never had the game crash on me either. It’s 60fps but I’m cool with that. Gameplay feels smooth at that and it’s steady. No upscaling no frame Gen. 3440x1440.
I have heard a lot of people are having issues with Nvidia hardware though.
What’s crazy is how inconsistent the problems seem to be. I’ve got a 4080 Super and a decent processor, and I’m getting 120-140fps with most settings as high as they can go with frame gen on at 1440p. Only crashed once in about 40 hours of gameplay.
UE5 is a shit engine as of now, but what can be expected of a company run by someone just as insufferable? Epic took the advent of tech like DLSS and frame generation as an excuse to disregard performance and functionality.
All you have to do is pick out any UE5 game that exists and Google that + “performance.” Even meeting the recommended specs for Rogue City, I still had to find specialized configs to get the game the game stop crashing on launch, and even then, those specs were based on using upscaling and frame generation. In reality, “recommended” was about 25fps at 1280x720. That used to be, and realistically should be unthinkable.
AND EVEN THEN, the engine’s built-in settings for upscaling and frame generation caused even more crashing. Ultimately, I had to disable it in-game and turn it on in my driver settings because of the busted-ass engine. This is a problem with the state of gaming, and people like Randy, Tim and their supporters are only exacerbating it.
The engine’s not the problem. Personally, I have only played a single game on UE5 that had shit performance on my aging PC (I can’t even use DLSS), and it’s an early access, independently made, survival crafting game. It was never going to perform well or even be finished.
I played the first one but after that the formula felt pretty samey and I was bored of it. Would a fourth Borderlands game even be good if it wasn’t laggy?
Well it shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone, but Randy Pitchford is really good at providing ammo for these types of headlines. Guy needs to learn to keep his mouth shut sometimes.
It’s 100% an astroturfing campaign. Doesn’t matter if it looks good or bad, it’s still getting awareness out there about the game which generates clicks and probably makes more money than the game itself.
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Why is he like this?
For a long time he was told by everyone in public and in private that he was awesome and perfect, and the greatest game developer, which made him a ton of money and very famous. Now his latest game is failing and his overinflated ego is panicking.
his new game is failing. He must keep it in the zeitgeist for as long as possible. This is just some guy trying to be relevant
Sorry I can’t hear you Randy. I am playing silksong and after that, I am doing another BG3 playthrough.
Welp, that’s what I did. Got my money back. I’ll buy it when it’s $19.99.
I was going to do that originally but now I’m never playing it.
I’m not going to punish the entire development team just because he’s a tool.
You should get it for free elsewhere. Don’t give this asshole your money.
That’s an option, but there were a lot of people involved in making the game. I’m not a fan of collective punishment. They most probably did their best, he’s just a shit spokesperson.
Denuvo :'(
And Empress is gone, though they were pretty toxic so that’s no big loss for me.
Gearbox was been scummy for a while now. Customers can learn to stop giving them money or can keep putting up with this.
I have come to accept that this is a PR campaign to plaster the name everywhere all over social media and let it worm its way into currently pissed off gamers’ heads for a few months down the line when they’ve calmed down and inevitably buy the fucking thing.
Pitchford is a slimeball. Rarely has a man who is allegedly not an insurance or used-car salesman given off such nakedly scummy vibes.
We need to stop giving free publicity to this little marketing man, and to this poorly optimised, expensive game.
I swear I have no idea why they let him talk. He doesn’t even own the company, surely someone at 2K could just go… you know… shush.
I don’t even think the BL4 thing is that bad, on the face of it. There is really no need to make it worse.
“We have been made aware of some performance issues in certain systems in our new release, we’ll be looking into performance improvements in future patches”. It’s not that hard. At this point just copy/paste whatever the other thousand UE5 games said, go fix the wonky precompilation boot step and stop digging a hole.
Hell, it’s even easier than that, because they have actually pretty much put that out. All he really needed to do was shut up about it.
Yeah but this assumes he has enough emotional intelligence not to take criticism personally and then lash out in response.
I accepted and just didn’t buy it to begin with.
After the borderlands 3 trainwreck it seems weird that people are apparently buying BL4
I honestly don’t know what this “trainwreck” talk is. BL3 was passable. I didn’t like the antagonists, but the game played fine if purples dropped way too much and the new guns weren’t great. People make it seem like it was the Worst Game Ever and I don’t get it. The pre-sequel was hot garbage, but 3 was fine.
It’s hard to consider an 81 on OpenCritic to be a trainwreck. People tend to buy games that review well, especially when it’s a co-op shooter with basically no competition.
Damn I had to look that up cause it seemed unbelievable. I am shocked it reviewed that well. It just seemed so awful to me.
Am I so out of touch?? No, the children are.
Nah, that game’s great. The writing’s not good, especially for the villains, but people like that game because it’s good.
From what I hear from people actually able to play the game, it’s better than 3.
Something like:
2 > 4 > 1 > 3 > Pre-Sequel
Was going to say… Who is out there buying games way outside their machines’ specs? Seems pretty straightforward.
I do get a little annoyed at the folks angry at BL4 using a higher end engine. Like, it does look a lot better than previous iterations. That engine upgrade wasn’t for nothing.
There are a ton of looter shooters floating around that aren’t using the Unreal 5 engine. Just play one of those instead. Hell, go back and play BL1. I’m pretty sure that thing runs on a toaster.
UE5 can run fine on older hardware, but most devs either aren’t given the time to properly optimize or don’t give a fuck about it and would rather rely on upscaling and frame gen tech.
I have a 3090 in a 7800x3d box with 64 gb ram and I had to drop from 7680x2160 to 3840x1080 to get decent framerates. I get better performance in Star Citizen. After a few CTD’s I just went ahead and got a refund.
This game goes into the twenties on a freaking 4070 at 1440 on high settings and doesn’t even get 60 at medium settings
Now let’s take a look at the “recommended specs” Randy put out there
Sorry but when in the world is that even remotely acceptable that you consider last Gen was outside machine specs when the developers said sure two generations ago is perfectly fine, which btw, holy crap it’s not.
There’s a difference between a game being way outside of your specs because it’s graphically very advanced and your hardware is old, and a game just being unoptimized slop that expects its users to deal with by throwing higher specs at a fixable problem.
I have a brand new 5070ti that can play all kinds of UE5 games with much better graphics than BL4 at 4k resolution with ray tracing at a decent frame rate without relying on frame gen. And I’m in the top few percentiles here.
Out of the loop, is it a AAA game drama?
Apparently the graphics are basically the same as 3, but performance is dog shit on even the best hardware and crashes are unavoidable.
When people complained, he said they need to use AI fake frame and upscale from 720. Which still wasn’t good performance.
It might get fixed later in updates. But this guy is handling so badly he might legitimately be mentally unwell. It’s at the point it’s weird he still has a job
It’s got Denuvo running
Yeah, so it’s just the usual
Just your typical Randy drama you get at every BL release.
At least he didn’t punch anyone this time.
Nor did he leave a USB stick containing sensitive design data and camgirl porn at a Medieval Times
Things are looking up for ol’ Randy
Yet!
True, no physical punches just metaphoric ones to every gamer right in the genitals with his BS yet again.
BL4 is running horribly, even on higher end PCs. I have a 4090 and a decent processor, but only getting 80FPS max with a good few settings on low or off and AI frame gen on (I would rather not, but performance is just that bad).
I’ve got a 6800xt and it runs really well on medium settings. Looks pretty good as well. Never had the game crash on me either. It’s 60fps but I’m cool with that. Gameplay feels smooth at that and it’s steady. No upscaling no frame Gen. 3440x1440.
I have heard a lot of people are having issues with Nvidia hardware though.
What’s crazy is how inconsistent the problems seem to be. I’ve got a 4080 Super and a decent processor, and I’m getting 120-140fps with most settings as high as they can go with frame gen on at 1440p. Only crashed once in about 40 hours of gameplay.
I am going to need to double check my settings then. I might have only enabled DLSS and not frame gen.
Holy shit you get 80 fps with frame gen on with a 4090? What resolution?
2560 × 1440
Holy fuck that is so much worse than I realized it was. What a joke.
Say it with me now: “Fuck Randy Pitchford”
UE5 is a shit engine as of now, but what can be expected of a company run by someone just as insufferable? Epic took the advent of tech like DLSS and frame generation as an excuse to disregard performance and functionality.
All you have to do is pick out any UE5 game that exists and Google that + “performance.” Even meeting the recommended specs for Rogue City, I still had to find specialized configs to get the game the game stop crashing on launch, and even then, those specs were based on using upscaling and frame generation. In reality, “recommended” was about 25fps at 1280x720. That used to be, and realistically should be unthinkable.
AND EVEN THEN, the engine’s built-in settings for upscaling and frame generation caused even more crashing. Ultimately, I had to disable it in-game and turn it on in my driver settings because of the busted-ass engine. This is a problem with the state of gaming, and people like Randy, Tim and their supporters are only exacerbating it.
The engine’s not the problem. Personally, I have only played a single game on UE5 that had shit performance on my aging PC (I can’t even use DLSS), and it’s an early access, independently made, survival crafting game. It was never going to perform well or even be finished.
Oh look the piece of shit opens its mouth again.
We understand you stumbled dick first into your position of power. Now please shut the fuck up, you somehow sentient sludgeball.
I played the first one but after that the formula felt pretty samey and I was bored of it. Would a fourth Borderlands game even be good if it wasn’t laggy?
Don’t let the name fool you, it’s the sixth game.
Is this not the third tabloid style headline here about essentially the same thing?
Well it shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone, but Randy Pitchford is really good at providing ammo for these types of headlines. Guy needs to learn to keep his mouth shut sometimes.
It’s 100% an astroturfing campaign. Doesn’t matter if it looks good or bad, it’s still getting awareness out there about the game which generates clicks and probably makes more money than the game itself.
That would be hard to believe, because the game already conservatively made tens of millions of dollars in a few days.
You got it!
All this stuff sounds like Randy Pitchford building out his personal brand.
I wish anything involving Pitchford was not reported on (at all).
How is it on console though? Better on PS5 or Xbox?
I’ve seen multiple people report they have to reboot after an hour or two or play because it has memory leak issues.
https://insider-gaming.com/borderlands-4-console-performance-how-does-borderlands-4-run-on-ps5-xbox-series-xs/
Take from that what you will.
Nothing from digital foundry yet.
DF is who I’m waiting on, but from what I’m hearing, they didn’t send reviewer codes so it’s all delayed and that’s never a good sign.