Gearbox CEO Randy Pitchford has been paying attention to comments about Borderlands 4's performance since it launched this past Friday, and he's got a characteristically brusque suggestion for you if you're dissatisfied.
As part of a very lengthy string of posts on social media platform X over the weekend (which also included multiple threads and responses to other users), Pitchford told one user who suggested Borderlands 4 should "look good without relying on AI upscal[ing]" to "code [their] own engine".
Pitchford suggested the user "show [Gearbox] how it's done", sarcastically suggesting that those currently working on the game's technical side are "clearly dumb and don't know what they're doing", and that "the world's greatest" technical staff "don't seem to know what [the user seems] to know".
For context, Borderlands 4, which launched on Friday, has attracted a Mixed user review score on Steam, with the majority of negative reviews pointing to sub-optimal performance as their reason for scoring the game negatively.
Some users are suggesting that Borderlands 4 runs poorly on hardware that's pretty new in PC terms, although others say that features like DLSS and frame generation alleviate the problem significantly.
Pitchford himself recommends that players use DLSS, since Borderlands 4 was "built to take advantage of it", dismissing criticisms of input latency and describing Borderlands 4's performance on PC as "pretty damn optimal". He suggests PC gamers should "tune to [their] preferences using the tools available".
Despite these comments, it is worth noting that Borderlands 4 did receive an update over the weekend, and that said update was intended to address "stability for a wide range of PCs", so it does look like Gearbox and publisher 2K intend to address these performance issues.
Borderlands 4 isn't the only game to come under fire for lackluster PC performance in recent years.
Others include the likes of Capcom's Dragon's Dogma 2 and Monster Hunter Wilds, as well as indie titles like Hyper Light Breaker, although none of these games are built on Unreal Engine 5, which some Borderlands 4 players are blaming for the game's issues.
In any case, you can grab Borderlands 4 right now for PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X|S, and make sure to check out our interview with Randy Pitchford to find out how the game came together.
