Borderlands 4 Launches With Guns, Loot, and… Performance Issues?
Borderlands 4 has arrived, and while Pandora’s vaults are presumably full of loot, PC players are full of something else: complaints. If you’ve been anywhere near Steam in the last 24 hours, you already know the vibe — Borderlands 4 is off to a rocky start, with “Mixed” reviews piling up.
Here’s the real kicker: even high-end PCs are struggling. Players are reporting stuttering, crashes, and performance issues. Steam reviews have not been kind, and even Randy Pitchford himself chimed in.
Previously, Randy had tried to emphasize how incredible it was to get 55-50 fps out of the game engine. This now appears like attempts to smooth over a rough launch needing a significant day-one patch to smooth some edges.
It’s clear more work is needed. For now, if you’re rocking older hardware, you might want to hold off. Unfortunately, Borderlands loot is usually virtual guns – not new GPUs.
Déjà Vu of AAA Woes
We’ve been here before. From Starfield’s mixed PC launch to The Last of Us Part I’s infamous port issues, optimization seems to be the final boss no developer can beat. The irony is that Borderlands has always been about excess — more guns, more chaos, more explosions — but in 2025, “more” apparently includes “more crashes.”
While I believe that some launches – such as Pokémon Scarlet and Violet were significantly exaggerated in how much the performance affected things – it also wasn’t trying to push the hardware limits. I’m not ever exactly sure why the Borderlands team thinks their game needs to be the new Crysis series. Who cares if the game is 60fps at 4k when the point is playing with friends and looting monsters? People will do that on Stardew Valley pixel graphics all day long.
Should You Buy Borderlands 4 Now?
If you’re a diehard fan with a monster PC and patience for hotfix roulette, sure — Pandora is still Pandora. But for the rest of us, maybe wait a week (or three) until Gearbox patches this up. After all, the loot isn’t going anywhere.
For now, the only legendary drop most players are finding is a legendary blue screen of death.
Entertainment Brain 