Borderlands 4 has attracted many players to the new loot shooter since its release, but many have been struggling with the game’s performance from the very beginning. The head behind Borderlands 4 has now stated that it is quite normal for some PCs to only achieve 30 FPS. However, the community only partially agrees with his statements.
What performance problems are there? Borderlands 4 celebrated a new player record on September 14, 2025. With 304,398 players, it reached a new high (source: SteamDB). However, right from the release, many players faced significant performance issues. Players are also voicing this in their reviews on Steam.
Currently (as of September 15, 2025, 09:30 AM) the game holds 65% positive reviews and is rated as Mixed
. Although the performance issue is significant and they want to work on it, the head of the game’s developer studio, Gearbox Entertainment, stated that not all PCs can be expected to achieve high FPS and that compromises must be made. The community is not taking this positively.
The game is incredibly optimized
What does Randy Pitchford say about the performance? In a new thread on x.com, Pitchford comments on the performance of Borderlands 4 and praises his game. He begins his thread by stating that players need to understand the relationship between their hardware and the software they are playing.
He continues: We have developed an amazing, fun, and huge looter-shooter campaign game. The game is incredibly optimized – which means that the software does what we want it to do without wasting unnecessary cycles on bad processes.
In a previous post on x.com, Pitchford also explained that players shouldn’t be 4k-stubborn
and should set the game to 1440p if they want a better experience and don’t have high-end specifications.
Pitchford states that it is a mistake to expect to achieve a high frame rate and a high resolution with minimum specifications. Compromises between features must be made if one doesn’t want to be disappointed. Although they are working on PC performance, he claims that the real problems
only affect a small part of the player base.
At the end of his thread, he again recommends DLSS, a feature that promises more FPS through AI on NVIDIA graphics cards. If one needs help, they should reach out to customer service. He also thanks the fans for their passion.
The developers of the game also released a guide to better optimize the game, but this also attracted criticism. Many players reported that even with strong high-end graphics cards, they had issues with the game and only achieved just
60 FPS.
DLSS is also not always popular among players. Many players believe that DLSS is often mentioned as a feature to justify poor optimization.
Players Stand Against Pitchford
What are players saying about the new thread? While some players support Pitchford, many are not well-received by the new tweets. Reports of problems with high-end PCs are coming in, but also console issues that Pitchford does not address in his tweets.
@Zy_6969 (via x.com) agrees with Pitchford on many points, but even he experiences the game not running perfectly despite having an RTX 5090: Stop gaslighting us and saying it’s not true when other games run well on the same hardware.
Some users are also speaking up about the PS5 version and asking for improvements. @theNYFrost (via x.com) reports stuttering and FPS drops in the console version.
The user @natedog10141 (via x.com) praises the game, but asks Pitchford not to ignore the criticism: It is so good, but just terribly optimized.
Nevertheless, Gearbox Entertainment is trying to further optimize the game with new updates. On September 13, 2025, a new update was released for PC that aims to provide stability improvements across a wide range of PCs.
What do you think? Is Borderlands 4 running well for you, or are you also experiencing performance issues? Feel free to write it in the comments. Pitchford recently commented on a desired option that he sees critically: The head of Borderlands 4 believes a new option could undermine fairness, letting the community vote on it
