Randy Pitchford, the head of Borderlands 4, has challenged players to bring the shooter’s servers to their knees. As a reward, a free content pack is up for grabs.
What did the boss offer? Randy Pitchford, the head of Borderlands 4, posted a post on X.com on September 12, on the release of his shooter, where he challenged fans. He does not believe that players could take down Borderlands 4.
As Pitchford explains, there have been outages of online systems during some major AAA releases, where the servers simply could not handle the influx of players. However, in Borderlands 4, it is very unlikely that players could overload the system.
Therefore, the developer encouraged players to really push the system to its limits over the weekend: Playing together in co-op, joining random games, or logging in and out during peak times – all “fair” methods to maximally stress the servers. Hacking attacks would, of course, not count.
To motivate players for this stress test, Pitchford promised a free content pack with skins and a shield for everyone who helps to heat up the servers between September 12 and 14. The DLC will be available regardless of whether the servers collapse under the load.
Should the system unexpectedly fail, the boss intends to find a way to reward players and compensate for the outages.
Servers hold strong, elsewhere it’s shaky
And how did it go? As expected, there was a significant increase in players in Borderlands 4 over the weekend (September 13 and 14, 2025). According to SteamDB, the shooter reached its highest peak of 288,130 concurrent players on Saturday night (September 13, 2025) our time.
There have actually been no signs of server problems so far. On Technobezz, no significant connectivity issues can be proven for the past 24 hours, and it’s quiet on X as well.
In the comments, the mood is still rather mixed. Players complain about crashes, the lack of a FOV slider for consoles, and the overall performance of the game. While Borderlands 4 continues to do well in gameplay, there are obviously still plenty of issues for the developers – but the servers do not seem to be one of them.
While the servers of Borderlands 4 seem to be rock-solid, things are not running so smoothly elsewhere: Many players complained about performance issues at the release, resulting in poor reviews on Steam at the PC launch. The developer now publishes optimization tips for Borderlands 4 and that shows how poorly the game really runs
