Randy Pitchford Melts Down Over Borderlands 4 Performance Complaints: 'Code Your Own Engine'

Borderlands 4 finally hit shelves on September 11, 2025. The hype was big, the player numbers were bigger, and the reviews were mostly positive.

On paper, Gearbox should be celebrating. But the conversation has been hijacked by performance complaints and the studio’s loudest voice: Randy Pitchford.

Instead of letting the game speak for itself, the Gearbox co-founder is once again online, arguing with players over why Borderlands 4 doesn’t run the way it should. The result is a PR disaster that feels very familiar.

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Borderlands 4 launched on September 11, 2025, and hit an all-time Steam peak of more than 304,000 concurrent players.

Credit: Gearbox Software

A Rocky Launch

On the surface, things looked good. Borderlands 4’s all-time concurrent peak on Steam crossed 304,000 players in its first days, more than triple Borderlands 3’s peak of around 94,000. That’s a massive improvement.

Critics mostly praised the game as a step up from its predecessor. Review scores leaned positive, pointing to tighter gunplay, improved missions, and plenty of loot to grind.

The problem? Performance issues on PC are everywhere. Even with monster setups, yes, including rigs with NVIDIA’s RTX 5090, players reported dips below 60 frames per second, stutters, and sluggish responsiveness.

Not exactly ideal for a shooter that depends on quick reflexes and accuracy.

Outlets like Tom’s Hardware and PC Gamer piled on, noting that Borderlands 4 was crushing even top-end hardware.

A day-one patch helped, but not enough. User reviews reflected the frustration, dragging the game to a mixed 67% score on Steam across nearly 17,000 reviews.

Pitchford Steps In

That’s when Randy Pitchford decided to jump into the fire.

Instead of acknowledging the issues, Pitchford went on X (formerly Twitter) to argue that players just weren’t using the right settings. He claimed that “three- to four-year-old hardware” could hit 120 FPS with tweaks.

This didn’t land well. Players who had just dropped thousands of dollars on high-end GPUs wanted to know how their rigs couldn’t handle a game that looks like, well, Borderlands. One user asked what specs he was talking about.

Pitchford’s response? Borderlands 4 is a “premium game made for premium gamers.”

Translation, if your machine can’t run it, that’s your fault.

Except the complaints weren’t just coming from folks with “old hardware.” RTX 4090 owners were posting benchmarks showing unstable performance, inconsistent frame pacing, and frame drops in firefights.

So when Pitchford started labeling players who insisted on 4K as “4K stubborn,” the backlash exploded. Replies and quote tweets dwarfed his likes, a classic social media ratio. Gamers were not impressed.

Credit: Reproduction / X

Picking Fights With Customers

Pitchford’s replies didn’t just sound defensive, they veered into antagonistic. When one fan suggested better upscaling solutions, he snapped back with: “Code your own engine and show us how it’s done, please.”

That’s the kind of line you’d expect from a random Redditor, not the head of the studio. The message boiled down to: if you don’t like it, build your own game.

It didn’t help that the official optimization guide on Steam essentially recommended a $2,000 GPU just to play the game at 1080p Ultra.

Not 4K Ultra, 1080p Ultra. Combine that with a cel-shaded art style that hasn’t fundamentally changed in over a decade, and you’ve got players scratching their heads.

The result? Every attempt at “explaining” just dug the hole deeper. Instead of calming the community, Pitchford made it clear he thought the real problem wasn’t the game’s optimization.

It was the players’ expectations.

The Blame Game

Pitchford’s public posts leaned on the same theme: if you’re unhappy, it’s on you.

• If you balked at the $70–$80 price point before launch, you weren’t a “real fan.”
• If the game doesn’t run at 4K, you’re “stubborn” for expecting it to.
• If you complain about optimization, maybe you should “code your own engine.”

The logic is simple but bizarre: customers are wrong, the game is fine.

Pitchford even argued that the game is “pretty damn optimal,” insisting that Gearbox had delivered exactly what it wanted.

He encouraged players to accept “trade-offs” between resolution, features, and frame rates. Want 4K and 60 FPS? Too bad, lower your settings.

That’s not exactly the kind of message that soothes frustrated buyers, especially when the game costs a premium price and demands bleeding-edge specs just to run decently.

Community notes on X even corrected him, pointing out that it’s the publisher’s responsibility to provide accurate recommended specs before launch, not the player’s job to gamble $80 and hope for the best.

Console Woes Too

PC players weren’t the only ones annoyed. Console users noticed that Borderlands 4 shipped without a field-of-view slider. The result was a zoomed-in look that caused motion sickness for some players.

When fans asked for an option, Pitchford floated the idea that FOV sliders might affect “fairness” in a mode he “couldn’t talk about yet.”

Rumors immediately spread about competitive plans for Borderlands 4, but the explanation fell apart once people pointed out that the PC version already has an FOV slider.

The inconsistency just fueled more frustration. Why limit consoles but not PC? If fairness is the goal, shouldn’t the rule apply to both?

Again, a simple acknowledgment, “we’re working on it”, would have gone a long way. But the answer created more questions and more negative headlines.

Ok, so, the Bigger Picture 👇

What makes this whole saga worse is that Borderlands 4 isn’t a bad game. Most agree it’s fun, packed with loot, and a genuine improvement over Borderlands 3.

The problem is optics. Pitchford’s inability to take criticism gracefully has turned performance issues into a PR nightmare.

Rather than “great game, rough launch,” the story has become “Randy Pitchford vs. his own customers.”

This isn’t new, either. Pitchford has a history of fiery, defensive responses online.

He often goes directly after individual players, rather than keeping the professional distance most executives maintain. It’s a pattern: when criticism lands, he pushes back, hard.

The end result is the same every time, negative press, frustrated players, and more attention on him than the game.

Developers at Gearbox are probably thrilled that Borderlands 4 is selling well. They’re probably less thrilled that their boss is lighting fires on social media while they scramble to patch things up.

Now, Where Things Stand?

So where does this leave Borderlands 4?

• Sales are strong. Launch numbers suggest plenty of people bought in.
• Reviews are mixed. Critics like it, but user scores on Steam are dragging it down.
• Performance is shaky. Patches will likely improve stability, but the bar is higher when you’re charging $80.
• PR is a mess. Pitchford’s replies are doing more damage than the bugs themselves.

Gamers are calling for him to stop posting and let the developers handle fixes quietly. Whether that happens is anyone’s guess.

What’s clear is that Borderlands 4 is another AAA launch caught in the cycle of “ship now, fix later.” Players have seen it before, and they’re tired of paying premium prices for underbaked products.

Pitchford could have admitted the game needs work and promised updates. Instead, he called his own audience stubborn and told them to code their own engine.

Not exactly a winning strategy.

I think Borderlands 4 deserved better than this mess. It’s an ambitious looter-shooter weighed down by optimization issues and a studio head who can’t resist jumping into the mud with his players.

The real shame is that most of these fights could have been avoided with a little humility.

again, a simple “we’re aware, we’re working on it” would have shifted the narrative.

But ok, now we’ve got days of ratios, community notes, and memes about “premium gamers.”

The game will probably get fixed. The question is whether Randy Pitchford’s reputation with fans can be. What do you think?