Copyright Wccftech
On one hand, Borderlands 4 had a strong launch. In its opening hours, it had the biggest launch for the entire Borderlands series on PC with over 100K concurrent players on Steam, eventually hitting over 300K on its opening weekend. It hit 2 million units sold in its opening week, and for September 2025, it topped sales charts in the US, becoming one of the best-selling games in the US for 2025 so far. That said, according to Take-Two Interactive boss Strauss Zelnick, sales were "softer" than expected. In an interview with The Game Business that went live shortly after the announcement that Grand Theft Auto VI was delayed, Zelnick also commented on the sales for Borderlands 4. While Zelnick commended the game's critical reception, he called the commercial success of the game "softer" than the company would have liked, and specifically cited the poor performance and myriad of bugs that the game launched with on PC as part of why it has fallen below expectations. "The critical acclaim [for Borderlands 4] was superb," Zelnick said, "and we're really happy with the release. Equally, as you know, there were some challenges with the Steam release. Gearbox has been addressing those challenges and will continue to do so. So, in terms of units sold out of the gate, the numbers were a little softer than we would have liked. In the fullness of time, we think it's going to do great." You may recall that when Borderlands 4 launched and its PC performance was abysmal in many ways, Gearbox boss Randy Pitchford went on a tirade on X (formerly Twitter) and fought back against players who were rightfully complaining that this new triple-A game they bought wasn't running well on their machines. Pitchford even called the PC version "pretty optimal" when the game was facing well-deserved backlash. Thankfully, Zelnick is right that Gearbox has been working to address its issues. A patch from a couple of weeks ago specifically improved performance by double-digits.
