Borderlands 4 developer CEO responds to criticism over lack of optimization: 'Try coding your own game engine'



Borderlands 4, released on September 12, 2025, has been receiving numerous reports of crashes and other issues due to insufficient optimization. As a sequel to a popular series, the game's performance has fallen short of expectations, leading to growing user dissatisfaction and even criticism of the developer's CEO for his response to the reports.

Borderlands 4 CEO responds to criticism: Code your own engine | Windows Central
https://www.windowscentral.com/gaming/borderlands-4-ceo-code-your-own-engine

When narrowing down Borderlands 4's Steam reviews to the 'Most Helpful (All Time),' the top ratings in Japanese are generally 'Recommended,' but in English , most are 'Not Recommended,' with many pointing out optimization issues.



In addition to reports of crashes and stuttering, there are also reports of frame rates not increasing significantly even when using high-spec devices such as the RTX 5090 or Ryzen 9 9950X3D at 1440p resolution and low settings.




While complaints were also posted on online message boards and on X (formerly Twitter), Randy Pitchford, CEO of developer Gearbox, responded to many of the criticisms, saying that 'many issues can be resolved by adjusting the settings,' and urging players to review their own settings.

Only about 0.04% of Borderlands 4 customer service reports were performance-related, and of those, 0.037% were resolved by prompting users to change their settings. Pitchford noted this provides an 'interesting and useful perspective for anyone who is influenced by the opinions of others online.'

Additionally, Borderlands 4 is a ' premium game made for premium gamers ' and takes full advantage of the latest CPU and GPU capabilities, so players using older PCs should review their settings. It has been confirmed that PCs from three to four years ago can achieve 120 fps or higher. Pitchford explained that the game offers a wealth of tools for adjusting the balance between FPS, resolution, and rendering capabilities, so if you're not satisfied with the balance, you can adjust your settings yourself to make trade -offs between performance and quality.

Pitchford has consistently responded to comments such as 'It doesn't work satisfactorily even with the latest GPUs' by saying, 'We'll help you adjust it to suit your personal PC specs.' However, he also seemed to grow impatient, replying , 'By all means, write your own engine and show us how it works. If you're successful, we'll become your customer.'




'The wide variety of hardware configurations among users certainly presents challenges for optimization, and there's no doubt that the diversity of PC environments exacerbates performance issues. However, what's probably making the situation worse is CEO Pitchford's style of speaking out on social media, which will only further frustrate users who feel their games aren't performing as expected. Taking an aggressive stance in response to customer concerns clearly only makes the situation worse,' Windows Central said.

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in Game, Posted by log1p_kr