Borderlands 4 is here and has recently become available for players on Steam, PS5, and Xbox Series – or at least in theory. The community is frustrated with the current performance of the game, but they’re taking it with a smile.
This is the current situation with Borderlands: Borderlands 4 launched on September 11, 2025 at around 7 PM on Steam. However, the initial feedback about the game is not really positive: Many players on Steam are complaining about the performance of Borderlands 4.
As of now (September 12, 2025, 10:15), the game has only a “mixed” rating with 9,276 reviews (60% of the reviews are positive). Players are also sharing various pieces of evidence for their frustration on Reddit.
Player shakamaboom shares a screenshot from the game (via Reddit), through which he cannot understand how an open scene with a bit of grass, rocks, and water can be so heavy for the graphics processor. The answer with the most upvotes reads: “It renders every blade of grass at 8K” (via Reddit).
Player Muted_Wrangler_ shows in a clip on Reddit how the “birds” in the game fly rather stiffly through the air or lack animations. “I’ve seen NPCs and characters in T-Pose, but never birds,” he adds in a comment (via Reddit).
Of course, when there’s a bad atmosphere within the community, people tend to look for mistakes explicitly and very closely, but a large part of the player base takes it with a smile. And that is due to the head of the development studio, who already expressed his opinion on the performance of Borderlands 4 even before the release.
Here is the launch trailer for Borderlands 4, which you can play since September 11, 2025:
“The Jokes Write Themselves”
Randy Pitchford, CEO of Gearbox and head of Borderlands 4, stated even before the game’s release on X.com that players whose computers are below the minimum requirements should not expect to be able to play Borderlands 4 at all:
It’s a big, bold, new, seamless world, and I regret to say that older hardware may not deliver buttery smooth performance for the latest AAA games, as has always been the case since the beginnings of PC gaming.
Even the “Day 1 Patch” is supposed to bring optimizations, but it won’t be a miracle cure for systems below the minimum requirements. For that, he asks for understanding. While Pitchford’s statement is a correct statement regarding the minimum requirements of the game, it does not make the community any more positive.
Why are players frustrated? A meme that was posted in the Steam subreddit summarizes the general mood regarding the weak performance at the release of Borderlands 4 well. “The jokes write themselves,” writes Moth_LovesLamp in response to Pitchford’s statement regarding the criticism the game receives on Steam. As the initial reactions of players show, the problem, according to fans, does not lie in the minimum requirements, but in the optimization of the game.
The community views the current state of the game and feels schadenfreude, in light of Pitchford’s previously made statements.
“At some point, Randy Pitchford will hire a manager to keep him away from things like cameras and microphones,” writes Callinon mockingly (via Reddit).
Why is Pitchford so unpopular in the community? Pitchford has made himself unpopular with the community several times with difficult statements, where his apologies have often been counterproductive. When a player stated that he was unable to buy a game for 80 dollars, the CEO lectured him that real fans would certainly find a way if they cared enough.
For this reason, he is a popular target for the community’s anger, which now wants to pay him back for his difficult statements.
Borderlands 4 is not even 24 hours old and is already under criticism. However, apart from the weak performance at launch, other aspects of the game are actually being well received. MeinMMO editor Dariusz Müller has already tested the game before release and is quite positive despite the performance: Borderlands 4 reminds me of Destiny in the test, making it a fantastic loot shooter
