- Sluggish Performance at Launch: Borderlands 4’s PC version launched with widespread reports of low frame rates, stuttering, and even crashes, affecting both mid-range and high-end rigs pcgamer.com pcgamer.com. Early Steam reviews were “Mostly Negative,” with players citing poor optimization as the chief complaint pcgamer.com.
- Developer Defends the Game: Gearbox CEO Randy Pitchford has downplayed the issues, controversially claiming the game is “pretty damn optimal” and suggesting the problem lies with players’ hardware or expectations drimble.nl pcgamer.com. He advised gamers to lower their resolution (e.g. from 4K to 1440p) for better performance and even told unhappy customers to get a refund rather than expect perfect performance on older PCs pcgamer.com pcgamer.com.
- “Premium Game, Premium Hardware” Stance: Pitchford argued Borderlands 4 is a “premium game made for premium gamers” that “cannot be expected to run on too-old PC hardware,” equating outdated PCs to putting “a leaf blower’s motor” in a monster truck pcgamer.com. He noted the game uses Unreal Engine 5 and advanced features, implying that cutting-edge hardware is needed for high settings pcgamer.com.
- High Specs and Technical Demands: The official PC system requirements were steep – Gearbox even updated the minimum spec to require an 8-core CPU, reflecting the game’s heavy processing needs pcgamer.com. Even top-tier GPUs struggle: tests showed an RTX 5090 (the latest ~$2000 graphics card) averaging only ~40 FPS at 4K ultra settings without upscaling pcgamer.com. To reach 60+ FPS, players must rely on DLSS upscaling and frame generation tech, essentially trading image quality for performance pcgamer.com pcgamer.com.
- Backlash from Players and Critics: Pitchford’s comments sparked backlash in the gaming community. Gamers bristled at being called “4K stubborn” and blamed for expecting smooth performance—especially since even 1080p can drop below 60 FPS on popular GPUs like the RTX 3060/4060 pcgamer.com pcgamer.com. On Reddit and Steam forums, frustrated fans shared meme videos (like a “PS5 peak performance 1 FPS” gag) and demanded fixes. Professional reviewers and tech analysts have also piled on, criticizing Gearbox for a lack of optimization and calling the situation “unacceptable” on such high-end hardware techradar.com techradar.com.
- Ongoing Fixes and Context: Gearbox released a hefty day-one patch (~2.7 GB) to improve stability and has been rolling out hotfixes to address crashes and performance hitches pcgamer.com pcgamer.com. Industry veterans note this isn’t entirely new territory – previous Borderlands games also had rocky PC launches that were eventually smoothed out with patches pcgamer.com pcgamer.com. However, critics argue that in 2025, gamers are fed up with “ropey” PC ports and expect better out-of-the-box performance. The onus is on developers to optimize their games, not on players to continuously upgrade or tweak settings, they say techradar.com techradar.com.
The PC Performance Complaints: Low FPS, Stutters, and Crashes
Borderlands 4’s much-anticipated release quickly turned sour for many PC players due to technical issues. Reports poured in about frame rates tanking well below 60 FPS even on powerful setups, along with frequent stutters and hitching during combat. In one test, an elite gaming rig (Ryzen 7 9800X3D CPU with an RTX 5090 GPU) barely hit ~40 FPS on average at 4K max settings, and even crashed to desktop during a session pcgamer.com. Indoors or outdoors, the game struggled, prompting disappointment given the hardware involved pcgamer.com pcgamer.com.
Early adopters described the PC version as “a big, bold world of stutters and disappointing frame rates”, echoing a pattern: “every major Borderlands game has run like a bag of frogs juggling bowling balls on release” – in other words, not very well pcgamer.com. While that tongue-in-cheek description from PC Gamer highlights a historical trend of shaky launches, many players in 2025 felt that Borderlands 4 was exceptionally rough. Crashes to desktop were also a common gripe; one developer patch did reduce the crash frequency, but did not eliminate the problem entirely pcgamer.com.
Steep hardware requirements exacerbated the issue. Upon launch, Gearbox quietly revised the game’s minimum requirements to call for an 8-core processor (or equivalent), which left folks with 6-core CPUs uncertain if they’d be supported pcgamer.com. This move hinted that CPU bottlenecks might be a culprit in the poor performance. Indeed, analysis showed Borderlands 4 can be CPU-limited – even with a top-tier GPU, the game wasn’t fully utilizing the graphics card because the processor became a choke point pcgamer.com.
Players with mid-range systems (which represent a large chunk of the Steam user base) reported especially poor results. As one community member lamented, “No one on PC wants to play at ~60 fps. They didn’t buy 3080s or 4080s to play games at 60 fps 1440p.” pcgamer.com Another user quipped that even with a new RTX 5090 and high-end CPU, “it runs like absolute buttcheeks… the horsepower cost is ridiculous.” pcgamer.com Such frank critiques captured the community’s sentiment that something was fundamentally wrong with the game’s optimization on PC.
Randy Pitchford’s Response: “The Game Is Pretty Damn Optimal”
Facing the growing outcry, Gearbox CEO Randy Pitchford took to X (formerly Twitter) to address performance complaints – but his responses poured fuel on the fire. Pitchford insisted the game itself was not to blame, declaring “the game is pretty damn optimal” in terms of software efficiency 80.lv. By “optimal,” he explained, he meant the code isn’t wasting cycles on “bad processes” and is doing what it’s supposed to 80.lv. In other words, from Pitchford’s perspective, Borderlands 4 was coded well – and any performance problems were largely due to players pushing beyond what their hardware can handle.
“Borderlands 4 is a premium game made for premium gamers. Just as [it] cannot run on a PlayStation 4, it cannot be expected to run on too-old PC hardware… if you’re trying to drive a monster truck with a leaf blower’s motor, you’re going to be disappointed.” – Randy Pitchford on X pcgamer.com pcgamer.com
Pitchford’s colorful “monster truck vs. leaf blower motor” analogy drove home his point: he believes powerful, modern hardware is a baseline requirement for this game. He repeatedly emphasized that many complaints came from people attempting to run Borderlands 4 at ultra settings or 4K resolution on mid-tier rigs. “I know a lot of you are dead set on playing at 4K with ultra max settings and using two- or three-year-old hardware,” he noted, implying such expectations were unrealistic because “BL4 and UE5 are doing a lot” under the hood pcgamer.com.
Instead, the Gearbox boss offered some pragmatic (if patronizing) advice: “If you’re not 4K stubborn and just want to have a great, fun time with higher perf, please consider running at 1440p resolution… If you’ve got a beast of a video card, you’re probably fine at 4K. But if you’re in the middle or close to min spec, I would definitely recommend making that trade [down].” pcgamer.com pcgamer.com In practice, he’s telling PC gamers to dial back settings – treat Borderlands 4 like a next-gen title that needs compromise, not something that every gaming PC can brute-force at max settings.
Unsurprisingly, these comments did not go over well. Many felt Pitchford was shifting blame to consumers (“your PC is the problem”) rather than acknowledging any faults in the game’s optimization. One reply chastised him for calling players “4K stubborn” when even 1080p was a struggle on GPUs that “dominate the Steam charts” like the RTX 3060 pcgamer.com pcgamer.com. Dropping from a 4K to 1440p resolution on a 4K monitor also results in a blurry, scaled image, something enthusiasts are loath to do after investing in high-end displays pcgamer.com pcgamer.com. As a TechRadar writer bluntly summarized, “gamers won’t like being spoken down to” – Pitchford’s tone came off as patronizing, implying gamers were either “broke” or complaining too much techradar.com techradar.com.
Things reached a head when Pitchford suggested a “refund” for those truly unsatisfied. “If you discover your system can’t run the game well… and don’t want to mess with settings to make things good enough for you, please use the refund feature on Steam rather than have a subpar experience,” he tweeted pcgamer.com. Many took this as a flippant dismissal of legitimate buyers’ grievances. It’s rare for a CEO to directly tell players to go get a refund – essentially conceding that the game might not run “buttery smooth” on their machine. (Pitchford later noted only “0.01% of customers” had filed support tickets for performance issues, suggesting the problem was exaggerated online pcgamer.com pcgamer.com. Critics countered that most gamers vent on forums or reviews, not formal support tickets pcgamer.com pcgamer.com.)
Pitchford’s defensiveness even spilled into snark. In one exchange, a gamer suggested Gearbox should make the game look good without heavy AI upscaling (referring to DLSS). Pitchford fired back with sarcasm: “Code your own engine and show us how it’s done, please. We will be your customer when you pull it off,” he snapped, implying that industry-leading engineers and tech partners were already doing their best and that the user’s complaint was naive 80.lv. The “code your own engine” remark did him no favors; it painted the picture of an executive losing patience with his audience. As one commentator responded, “People expect their concerns to be acknowledged and addressed, not dismissed with statements like ‘Well, you do a better job.’ They’re not your bros, they’re your customers.” 80.lv 80.lv
Technical Breakdown: Unreal Engine 5, High System Requirements, and Known Issues
So, what’s under the hood of Borderlands 4, and why might it be taxing PCs so heavily? For starters, the game is built on Unreal Engine 5, Epic’s newest game engine known for incredible visuals – and notorious performance needs. UE5 enables features like Lumen global illumination and Nanite micro-geometry, which can make game worlds look stunning but also push hardware to the brink if not carefully optimized. Pitchford himself referenced that “BL4 and UE5 are doing a lot” behind the scenes pcgamer.com, hinting that the game’s ambition in graphics and scope comes at a cost to performance.
Borderlands 4’s world is larger and more detailed than its predecessors, and it appears Gearbox targeted current-gen consoles and high-end PCs as the baseline. The published PC specs bear this out. Minimum requirements call for at least an 8-core CPU (or equivalent multi-threaded performance) pcgamer.com – a notable bump up from Borderlands 3, which was content with 4 or 6 cores. Likewise, a relatively modern GPU and 16 GB of RAM are recommended just to get decent 1080p performance. In fact, the development team worked with NVIDIA to provide an “optimized settings” guide, effectively conceding that most players will need to use upscaling (DLSS) and frame generation to hit smooth frame rates at higher resolutions pcgamer.com pcgamer.com. According to those official charts, even a cutting-edge GeForce RTX 5080 would require DLSS and 4× frame generation just to exceed 60 FPS at 1440p resolution pcgamer.com pcgamer.com – a startling revelation that shocked many fans (“4× MFG and DLSS Balanced for 60 fps+ on an RTX 5080 at 1440p? Ouch.” as one outlet put it pcgamer.com).
The heavy reliance on upscaling technologies suggests that Borderlands 4 may be rendering internally at much lower resolutions to achieve playable performance, even on top hardware. Indeed, players with an RTX 5090 reported needing DLSS Performance mode (which renders at 1080p internally for a 4K output) plus frame generation to get frame rates above 100 FPS pcgamer.com pcgamer.com. While DLSS and similar tools are great allies for modern PC gaming, many argue they should be optional boosts – not crutches for baseline performance on flagship GPUs.
Another technical issue identified is the uneven CPU/GPU utilization. Borderlands 4 appears to be CPU-bound in many scenarios, meaning the processor becomes the limiting factor. One test showed the RTX 5090 GPU usage well below 100%, with the game bottlenecked by CPU speed when lots of action happens pcgamer.com pcgamer.com. This typically indicates that the game engine’s draw calls, physics, or other CPU-side computations aren’t fully optimized. It also explains why older CPUs (or those with fewer cores) struggle disproportionately – the game can max out a high-end CPU, so anything less hits a wall quickly. This is likely why Pitchford emphasized having realistic expectations on “older hardware”, warning that such PCs “may not provide buttery smooth performance” in a cutting-edge title like this pcgamer.com pcgamer.com.
Shader compilation stutters could be another culprit. Many recent PC games (especially on Unreal Engine) suffer from stuttering when compiling shaders on the fly. Some players suspect Borderlands 4 does this too, causing hitching when entering new areas or seeing new effects. In fact, a PC Gamer editor found that manually increasing his GPU shader cache to 100 GB alleviated much of the stuttering, albeit joking that “it feels like something I shouldn’t have to do in a well-optimised game” pcgamer.com. This anecdote highlights that the game might not be handling shader caching efficiently by default, leaving users to find workarounds.
On the bright side, Gearbox is actively patching the game. The day-one patch addressed some crashes (e.g. one that happened during certain boss fights) and possibly made some slight performance tweaks pcgamer.com. As of now, the studio has not released comprehensive patch notes detailing performance fixes, which has led to confusion (“the first patch has arrived to address stability – but no one knows what it does”, quipped one TechRadar article) techradar.com. But anecdotal reports say each update has incrementally improved things like stability and maybe a few FPS here and there. Pitchford has acknowledged that more optimizations are in the works, asking players for patience as the team refines the code post-launch.
Comparisons: How Does This Stack Up to Past Borderlands and Other Games?
Longtime Vault Hunters might be experiencing déjà vu. Borderlands 3 (2019) had its share of PC launch issues – many players recall stuttering menus, DX12 mode problems, and inconsistent performance until several patches ironed things out. And as noted, Borderlands 1 and 2 were simpler games technically, but even Borderlands Pre-Sequel and others had occasional performance quirks at launch. In fact, Gearbox’s own CEO more or less admitted this trend: he joked that “post-launch patches solve most of the issues in time” for Borderlands games, but that “stutters, hitches, and relatively low frame rates are the norm for the series” at launch pcgamer.com pcgamer.com. It’s almost become an unfortunate Borderlands tradition that the gameplay may be fantastic, but PC players need to endure a rough initial ride until stability updates catch up.
However, Borderlands 4’s situation feels amplified, perhaps because player expectations in 2025 are higher and the competition is fiercer. We’re in a year where several big-name PC releases have stumbled out of the gate – The Last of Us Part I PC port, Star Wars Jedi: Survivor, Redfall, and others all launched with performance woes that drew community ire. Gamers have grown increasingly vocal (some might say impatient) about unoptimized releases. Borderlands 4 appears to have hit a nerve both because of its issues and the way its leadership responded publicly.
It’s also worth comparing Borderlands 4 to other Unreal Engine 5 titles. UE5 is still relatively new in shipped games, and a pattern may be emerging: titles like Immortals of Aveum and Lords of the Fallen (2023) – both UE5-powered – were criticized for high system demands and subpar performance on PC at launch techradar.com. Borderlands 4 seems to follow this “poor optimization and performance” trend among early UE5 games techradar.com. The engine offers phenomenal graphical fidelity (Nanite can push millions of polygons, Lumen brings realistic lighting), but if a game tries to fully utilize those features, mid-range hardware can struggle. Developers face a steep optimization challenge to scale these features well. Borderlands 4, with its signature cel-shaded art style, might not look as photorealistic as some other UE5 games – leading some players to question why it runs so hard. As one TechRadar editor pointed out, “the title doesn’t have a significant visual leap from its predecessor, Borderlands 3”, yet it runs markedly worse techradar.com techradar.com. That raises the possibility that under-the-hood engine changes (rather than pure graphical complexity) are contributing to the slowdowns.
In comparison to other recent AAA titles, Borderlands 4’s PC performance has drawn parallels to the Cyberpunk 2077 launch (another hyped game that needed many patches) and even Starfield, which stirred debates about hardware requirements and optimization (though Starfield’s devs didn’t openly spar with players about it). The big difference is, Gearbox’s leadership chose to engage (or arguably, enrage) the community directly on social media, whereas most companies issue carefully crafted PR statements in such situations. This has made the Borderlands 4 saga stand out – it’s not every day you see a CEO tweeting math equations about how “only 0.01% of players” have “valid” performance issues pcgamer.com pcgamer.com, or challenging a fan to go build their own game engine.
Community and Critical Reception: Firestorms on Reddit, Steam, and Social Media
The fallout from Borderlands 4’s performance problems – and Pitchford’s comments – has been very public. On Steam, the game hit a low user review score initially. Within 48 hours of launch, over 1,000 Steam reviews rolled in, skewing negative. Players cited constant frame drops, poor optimization, and crashes, with some positive reviews explicitly warning “fun game, but wait for patches if you have mid-tier hardware.” As patches started to land, the Steam rating climbed from “Mostly Negative” to “Mixed” (~65% positive) pcgamer.com pcgamer.com – not exactly a badge of honor, but a slight improvement that suggests some issues were fixed or at least that the core gameplay was enjoyable enough for certain fans to overlook the technical flaws.
On Reddit, the r/Borderlands4 community and broader gaming subreddits were buzzing with memes and threads about the situation. One popular post sarcastically referenced Pitchford’s stance by showing a Borderlands character fiddling with old PC parts, captioned: “Randy says my toaster PC can’t run BL4… time to upgrade… to a nuclear reactor.” Another user recorded a tongue-in-cheek clip titled “Borderlands 4 peak performance on my rig” which showed an in-game scene chugging at an absurd 1 FPS slideshow – dramatizing the frustration. These posts underscore how pitchforks came out online, with Pitchford becoming a bit of a punching bag in absentia.
Even prominent figures in the gaming community chimed in. Game developers from other studios indirectly critiqued Pitchford’s approach: “I see that Randy is trying here but come on, ‘pretty damn optimal’ and ‘no wasteful cycles’… you can’t just blame users’ PCs,” wrote one industry veteran on X x.com. Technical analysts, like those at Digital Foundry (known for deep dives into game performance), haven’t released their full analysis yet at the time of writing, but on forums they noted that Borderlands 4’s issues seem to stem from thread management and asset streaming – things a player can’t fix by mere settings tweaks. In short, the consensus among experts is that the ball is in Gearbox’s court to optimize their code, not the players’ fault for expecting a smoother ride on reasonable hardware techradar.com techradar.com.
Professional reviewers also adapted their coverage due to the problems. Some outlets delayed publishing their full Borderlands 4 reviews, or ran provisional reviews-in-progress, explicitly citing performance as a reason. PC Gamer, for instance, ran a headline: “Why we don’t have a Borderlands 4 review yet”, explaining that it was difficult to review the game fairly when technical issues were so pronounced pcgamer.com pcgamer.com. Others that did review noted the paradox: “The best Borderlands game I’ve ever played — but with a small hitch,” as one summary put it, that “hitch” being the literal hitching of the frame rate pcgamer.com pcgamer.com. In an IGN article, reviewer Wesley Yin-Poole chronicled the escalating drama, wryly noting that “Randy Pitchford is at the ‘get a refund from Steam’ stage of the Borderlands 4 PC performance backlash” – signaling just how far the situation had spiraled publicly news.google.com news.google.com.
The community outcry isn’t just venting; it often comes with constructive findings too. Players have been actively sharing tips to improve performance: from obvious ones like updating GPU drivers and using Balanced or Performance DLSS modes, to more arcane tweaks like the aforementioned shader cache increase or editing config files to disable certain heavy effects. Gearbox’s own support forums have compiled user-discovered workarounds. For example, some users found that running the game in DirectX 11 mode (if unofficially enabled) smoothed out some stutters at the cost of lower average FPS. Others pointed out that using Borderlands 4’s built-in resolution scaler (separate from DLSS) with a sharpness filter could help mid-range GPUs. In essence, the community is trying to band-aid the performance while waiting for official patches.
Expert Commentary: What’s Causing the Issues and How to Fix Them?
Many tech experts have weighed in on possible causes for Borderlands 4’s woes. A common theory is that the game might be pushing Unreal Engine 5’s new features too hard without sufficient optimization. Notebookcheck.net and TechRadar noted that UE5 titles, especially ones using features like Nanite and Lumen, have a tendency to hammer CPU and GPU resources techradar.com techradar.com. If Borderlands 4 indeed uses such features for its expansive world (even with a stylized art style), it could explain the high baseline requirements.
Another angle is that Gearbox prioritized content and fun factor over performance tuning in the release build. One could argue this is evidenced by Pitchford’s own statements focusing on how “amazing, fun and huge” the game is, and saying “every PC gamer has a LOT of tools to balance their preferences” between performance and graphics 80.lv 80.lv. To a player, that sounds like “we’ve given you options to turn things down if it’s slow”. But as TechRadar’s Isaiah Williams writes, players shouldn’t have to “empty their wallets” on the latest hardware just to get a consistent frame rate in a new game techradar.com techradar.com. The better solution, he and others argue, is for developers to spend the time optimizing – whether that’s through better scaling on lower threads, reducing unnecessary draw calls, or providing more robust graphics options (e.g. an optimized “Medium” preset that actually looks good and runs well, which some say is lacking here).
Digital Foundry (the YouTube channel known for performance analyses) hasn’t published a video as of this report, but one of their contributors commented that shader compilation stutter and asset streaming might be key issues. Borderlands 4’s open-world design (new to the series which traditionally had more segmented maps) could be causing asset-streaming hitches as you traverse large areas. If the game is loading high-resolution textures or geometry on the fly without proper background threading, that could lead to noticeable stutters. Increasing the shader cache or installing the game on a fast SSD (preferably NVMe) could mitigate some of that – advice many tech forums have offered.
On the resolution side, it’s acknowledged that 4K ultra at high framerates is extremely demanding. But experts note that other current games with similar demands often include modern optimizations that Borderlands 4 may be underutilizing. For instance, some suggest the game could benefit from DirectStorage (to speed up asset streaming from SSDs) or from better multi-threading to use CPUs with 8+ cores more efficiently. There’s also speculation that Borderlands 4 leans heavily on single-core performance – which, if true, would be a mismatch for today’s multi-core CPUs and a reason even 8-core chips struggle if their per-core speed isn’t top-notch.
Looking forward, the general advice from the tech community to Gearbox is: focus on optimization patches and tone down the social media battles. “The ideal solution after a poorly optimized game’s release is for apologies to be shared and commitments of performance patches to be made – which Pitchford has done, but it’s overshadowed by the hardware statements,” TechRadar observes techradar.com techradar.com. In other words, the message of “we’re working on it, we’ll improve it” got lost when the CEO simultaneously told people their PC was sub-par. Several outlets, from PC Gamer to KitGuru, have essentially called on Gearbox to put their heads down and fix the game, rather than continue engaging in combative rhetoric. As one commentator wryly put it, “it would be great if some bosses just went on vacation right after their game launches” 80.lv 80.lv – implying that developers should let their patch teams do the talking through updates, not tweets.
Encouragingly, there are signs Gearbox is making progress. Pitchford and the official Borderlands social channels have noted that more patches are coming to address performance. If history is any guide, we can expect the game to run significantly better in a few weeks or months. Borderlands 3, for instance, received performance mode updates and driver optimizations that eventually made it run smoothly on a wide range of PCs. Borderlands 4 will likely follow suit, especially now that the issue has been so publicly spotlighted. Gearbox can ill afford to have PC players – a core part of their fanbase – alienated long-term.
For now, PC gamers eager to play Borderlands 4 have a few options: experiment with the graphics settings (the game offers resolution scaling, fidelityFX CAS sharpening, and other toggles that can help), use DLSS or FSR 2 if available for your GPU, and keep an eye out for each patch. It might also be wise to wait for updated GPU drivers from Nvidia/AMD, as they often release game-specific optimizations post-launch. Indeed, Nvidia posted an updated driver that mentions Borderlands 4 improvements, which could give a modest boost on GeForce cards.
In summary, the Borderlands 4 PC performance controversy has become a case study in how not to handle launch troubles. A beloved franchise’s new installment got bogged down by technical hiccups, and the studio’s chief doubled down on defending it rather than empathizing with players. The result: a PR mess atop the performance mess. Yet, beneath the drama, the game itself is being enjoyed by many – especially those who can brute-force through the issues or tweak their settings accordingly. As patches roll out, much of this storm may calm, and Borderlands 4 could very well stabilize into the looter-shooter joyride fans were hoping for.
One hopes that both Gearbox and gamers come away with lessons learned. For developers, it’s a reminder that PC optimization is as important as the content itself – and that early communication should focus on acknowledging issues and promising fixes (not pointing fingers at your audience’s hardware). And for players, it’s perhaps a cautionary tale about pre-ordering or day-one buys: sometimes it pays to wait and see how a game performs on launch, or at least be ready to tinker with settings. As of now, Borderlands 4’s adventure through Pandora’s vaults is a blast – if you have the rig (or the patience) to tame its technical turbulence. The hope is that soon, “the game is pretty damn optimal” will be an undisputed reality and not just a defensive claim drimble.nl, allowing everyone to enjoy the mayhem at full speed.
Sources:
- Purchese, Robert. “‘The game is pretty damn optimal’ – Randy Pitchford responds to Borderlands 4 PC performance complaints.” Eurogamer, 15 Sept. 2025 drimble.nl.
- Evanson, Nick. “I’ve tested Borderlands 4 on a minimum spec PC and a monster RTX 5090 rig, and it runs just as ‘Borderlands-at-launch’ as you’d expect.” PC Gamer, 11 Sept. 2025 pcgamer.com pcgamer.com.
- Edser, Andy. “2K Games posts Nvidia’s Borderlands 4 optimised settings guide, but the community is already in open revolt.” PC Gamer, 12 Sept. 2025 pcgamer.com pcgamer.com.
- Edser, Andy. “‘Borderlands 4 is a premium game made for premium gamers’ – Randy Pitchford’s tone deaf retort to the performance backlash.” PC Gamer, 15 Sept. 2025 pcgamer.com pcgamer.com.
- Wolens, Joshua. “Gearbox CEO Randy Pitchford’s chronic tweeting strikes again – says ‘less than 1% of 1%’ of players have valid performance issues.” PC Gamer, 15 Sept. 2025 pcgamer.com pcgamer.com.
- Williams, Isaiah. “Borderlands 4 maker says your old PC hardware is to blame for poor performance – even though it struggles on an RTX 5090.” TechRadar, 15 Sept. 2025 techradar.com techradar.com.
- Levine, Gloria. “‘Code Your Own Engine’: Gearbox CEO Responds to Borderlands 4 Criticism.” 80.lv, 16 Sept. 2025 80.lv 80.lv.
- Pitchford, Randy. Posts on X (Twitter), Sept. 2025 pcgamer.com pcgamer.com. (As cited via PC Gamer and Eurogamer reports)
