4d ago

'My Advice to Users Is to Accept Reality and Tune, or to Not Play' — Randy Pitchford Is at the 'Get a Refund From Steam' Stage of the Borderlands 4 PC Performance Backlash

www.ign.com 'My Advice to Users Is to Accept Reality and Tune, or to Not Play' — Randy Pitchford Is at the 'Get a Refund From Steam' Stage of the Borderlands 4 PC Performance Backlash - IGN

Randy Pitchford has continued his social media push to address complaints about the performance of the PC version of Borderlands 4, telling some disgruntled players they can get a Steam refund if they’re unhappy with the game.

PC Gaming @lemmy.ca

www.ign.com /articles/my-advice-to-users-is-to-accept-reality-and-tune-or-to-not-play-randy-pitchford-is-at-the-get-a-refund-from-steam-stage-of-the-borderlands-4-pc-performance-backlash

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153 comments

...or Do Not Play
way ahead of you there, guy
- Couldn't have been less interested. Borderlands hasn't been remotely interesting since 2 and everything since then has been a soulless cash grab.
  
  Hard disagree.
  Pre-Sequel, 3 and Wonderlands have all been great games that I had lots of fun with. I also know I'm going to have upwards of 100 hours of fun with 4. That's what makes this whole story even more frustrating...
  But I'm a patient gamer. I played the previous BL games years after they came out. I'll do the same for this one - not because I can't afford a 60€ price tag but because articles like this. Sad.
  
  I played an hour of the first game and that was enough for me, so I'm not exactly their target demo anyways.
- Their games are so bad now that it would be better to not play them.
  
  slaneesh_is_right
  Is she, though?

I accepted and just didn’t buy it to begin with.
- After the borderlands 3 trainwreck it seems weird that people are apparently buying BL4
  
  It's hard to consider an 81 on OpenCritic to be a trainwreck. People tend to buy games that review well, especially when it's a co-op shooter with basically no competition.
  
  I honestly don't know what this "trainwreck" talk is. BL3 was passable. I didn't like the antagonists, but the game played fine if purples dropped way too much and the new guns weren't great. People make it seem like it was the Worst Game Ever and I don't get it. The pre-sequel was hot garbage, but 3 was fine.
  
  From what I hear from people actually able to play the game, it's better than 3.
  Something like:
  2 > 4 > 1 > 3 > Pre-Sequel
- Was going to say... Who is out there buying games way outside their machines' specs? Seems pretty straightforward.
  I do get a little annoyed at the folks angry at BL4 using a higher end engine. Like, it does look a lot better than previous iterations. That engine upgrade wasn't for nothing.
  There are a ton of looter shooters floating around that aren't using the Unreal 5 engine. Just play one of those instead. Hell, go back and play BL1. I'm pretty sure that thing runs on a toaster.
  
  This game goes into the twenties on a freaking 4070 at 1440 on high settings and doesn't even get 60 at medium settings
  Now let's take a look at the "recommended specs" Randy put out there
  NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 / AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT / Intel Arc B580
  Sorry but when in the world is that even remotely acceptable that you consider last Gen was outside machine specs when the developers said sure two generations ago is perfectly fine, which btw, holy crap it's not.
  
  I have a 3090 in a 7800x3d box with 64 gb ram and I had to drop from 7680x2160 to 3840x1080 to get decent framerates. I get better performance in Star Citizen. After a few CTD's I just went ahead and got a refund.
  
  There’s a difference between a game being way outside of your specs because it’s graphically very advanced and your hardware is old, and a game just being unoptimized slop that expects its users to deal with by throwing higher specs at a fixable problem.
  I have a brand new 5070ti that can play all kinds of UE5 games with much better graphics than BL4 at 4k resolution with ray tracing at a decent frame rate without relying on frame gen. And I’m in the top few percentiles here.
  
  UE5 can run fine on older hardware, but most devs either aren't given the time to properly optimize or don't give a fuck about it and would rather rely on upscaling and frame gen tech.

Out of the loop, is it a AAA game drama?
- Yeah, so it's just the usual
- Apparently the graphics are basically the same as 3, but performance is dog shit on even the best hardware and crashes are unavoidable.
  When people complained, he said they need to use AI fake frame and upscale from 720. Which still wasn't good performance.
  It might get fixed later in updates. But this guy is handling so badly he might legitimately be mentally unwell. It's at the point it's weird he still has a job
  
  It's got Denuvo running
- Just your typical Randy drama you get at every BL release.
  
  At least he didn't punch anyone this time.
- BL4 is running horribly, even on higher end PCs. I have a 4090 and a decent processor, but only getting 80FPS max with a good few settings on low or off and AI frame gen on (I would rather not, but performance is just that bad).
  Edit: It was only DLSS enabled and not Frame Gen. I was able to get to ~90 FPS with most everything on low.
  
  Holy shit you get 80 fps with frame gen on with a 4090? What resolution?
  
  What's crazy is how inconsistent the problems seem to be. I've got a 4080 Super and a decent processor, and I'm getting 120-140fps with most settings as high as they can go with frame gen on at 1440p. Only crashed once in about 40 hours of gameplay.
  
  I've got a 6800xt and it runs really well on medium settings. Looks pretty good as well. Never had the game crash on me either. It's 60fps but I'm cool with that. Gameplay feels smooth at that and it's steady. No upscaling no frame Gen. 3440x1440.
  I have heard a lot of people are having issues with Nvidia hardware though.
- That AAAA to you!

I swear I have no idea why they let him talk. He doesn't even own the company, surely someone at 2K could just go... you know... shush.
I don't even think the BL4 thing is that bad, on the face of it. There is really no need to make it worse.
"We have been made aware of some performance issues in certain systems in our new release, we'll be looking into performance improvements in future patches". It's not that hard. At this point just copy/paste whatever the other thousand UE5 games said, go fix the wonky precompilation boot step and stop digging a hole.
Hell, it's even easier than that, because they have actually pretty much put that out. All he really needed to do was shut up about it.
- Yeah but this assumes he has enough emotional intelligence not to take criticism personally and then lash out in response.
  
  So why hasn't someone in charge taking his Twitter account away from him?
  You know how some people have seen eye dogs, well he needs a thinking brain person. Anytime he is in public there should be someone stood next to him who interrupts him before he has the opportunity to answer, and gives the corporately sanitised answer he should have given.

I have come to accept that this is a PR campaign to plaster the name everywhere all over social media and let it worm its way into currently pissed off gamers' heads for a few months down the line when they've calmed down and inevitably buy the fucking thing.
Pitchford is a slimeball. Rarely has a man who is allegedly not an insurance or used-car salesman given off such nakedly scummy vibes.
We need to stop giving free publicity to this little marketing man, and to this poorly optimised, expensive game.
- I don't think there's anything that well thought out, and it's just someone who takes things personally and cant resist blurting out their thoughts.
  Since after what he said my thinking was even if my friends beg me to get the game on discount I wont because of how personally irritated the comments have made me.
  
  Not casting aspersions towards you personally, but we all know how gamer boycotts go generally. As in, they don't. People cave and buy the games anyway, once they're over the initial outrage. This is 100% marketing.

The game is grossly overpriced and infected Denuvo malware. Those things are all symptoms of Randy Pitchford being involved. I’ll pass.

The reality is you made a game that few will play for several years. You could have made a game that could be playable on most contemporary machines. You didn't and will now have to suffer from shitty sales due to your inability to understand that the majority of us don't have the money to spend like you do you out of touch clueless ballsack.
- Anyone that remembers Aliens: Colonial Marines and Duke Nukem Forever knows that Randy Pitchford is garbage. He also ran off most of the talent behind BL1 and BL2, which is why BL3 writing was shitty.

Countdown to him getting fired in 3…2…3…4…8…49…
Because companies ultimately seem to love leaders that are toxic these days.
- I could be wrong, but doesn't he own the company?
  
  He wasn’t the only founder and Embracer bought them in 2021. Later TakeTwo acquired the studio when Embracer had to restructure. They operate under 2k now so he can most surely be fired.
  Also probably why he is even more of a cocky cunt nowadays. He already cashed out.

Sorry I can't hear you Randy. I am playing silksong and after that, I am doing another BG3 playthrough.
- Or an Expedition 33 new game+ This is truly a great year for games, current post aside

Oh look the piece of shit opens its mouth again.
We understand you stumbled dick first into your position of power. Now please shut the fuck up, you somehow sentient sludgeball.

Welp, that's what I did. Got my money back. I'll buy it when it's $19.99.
- I was going to do that originally but now I'm never playing it.
  
  I'm not going to punish the entire development team just because he's a tool.
- You should get it for free elsewhere. Don't give this asshole your money.
  
  Denuvo :'(
  
  That's an option, but there were a lot of people involved in making the game. I'm not a fan of collective punishment. They most probably did their best, he's just a shit spokesperson.

Why is he like this?
- It's the year of the wealthy personalities who dont keep their mouth shut because they believe they are right and everyone will agree with their points and love them.
  Happening right now with Mark Cuban on the NBA side.
- For a long time he was told by everyone in public and in private that he was awesome and perfect, and the greatest game developer, which made him a ton of money and very famous. Now his latest game is failing and his overinflated ego is panicking.
  
  Was he?
  Personally I've always thought of him as a bit of a prick.
  
  Really? Was that a long time ago?
  Seems to me he and Gearbox have been in lots of shit for a while now (the infamous USB drive, serious plagiarism accusations when Borderlands did an artistic 180 during development, Alien : Colonial Marines released broken as hell after funneling its funding to make BL2, Duke Nukem Forever...)
  And every time Pitchford's (mostly unnecesary) public answer has been terrible.
- his new game is failing. He must keep it in the zeitgeist for as long as possible. This is just some guy trying to be relevant

Say it with me now: "Fuck Randy Pitchford"
UE5 is a shit engine as of now, but what can be expected of a company run by someone just as insufferable? Epic took the advent of tech like DLSS and frame generation as an excuse to disregard performance and functionality.
All you have to do is pick out any UE5 game that exists and Google that + "performance." Even meeting the recommended specs for Rogue City, I still had to find specialized configs to get the game the game stop crashing on launch, and even then, those specs were based on using upscaling and frame generation. In reality, "recommended" was about 25fps at 1280x720. That used to be, and realistically should be unthinkable.
AND EVEN THEN, the engine's built-in settings for upscaling and frame generation caused even more crashing. Ultimately, I had to disable it in-game and turn it on in my driver settings because of the busted-ass engine. This is a problem with the state of gaming, and people like Randy, Tim and their supporters are only exacerbating it.
- The engine's not the problem. Personally, I have only played a single game on UE5 that had shit performance on my aging PC (I can't even use DLSS), and it's an early access, independently made, survival crafting game. It was never going to perform well or even be finished.

Of course the borderlands guy would look like that
- You ain't exactly handsome yourself bud😅
  
  Randy Pitchfork looks like a mix of the first second generation employee of blizzard (aka Piratesoftware) and Steve buscemi
  
  My mom says I am

Is this not the third tabloid style headline here about essentially the same thing?
- Well it shouldn't be a surprise to anyone, but Randy Pitchford is really good at providing ammo for these types of headlines. Guy needs to learn to keep his mouth shut sometimes.
- It's 100% an astroturfing campaign. Doesn't matter if it looks good or bad, it's still getting awareness out there about the game which generates clicks and probably makes more money than the game itself.
  
  That would be hard to believe, because the game already conservatively made tens of millions of dollars in a few days.
  
  That would have to be the weirdest advertising strategy in the history of all advertising.
  My our game, it's really shit

Considering i didn't bother to buy anything borderlands related since Borderlands 2, it will keep preety muchbthe same for me
- Same, got 1&2 on a humble bundle. I remember one running great, and 2 bearable on a 1gb netbook att. Cell shaded games shouldn't be this resource intensive!
  
  I still have my physical PC copy for the first Borderlands, it sounds almost a whole different world when i read 512mb vram recommended on the specs...

I haven't played 4, but I played 1, 2, and a bit of the presequel or whatever it was called. They were essentially all the same game. Run, shoot, run, shoot, hear vaguely off-color joke, run, shoot. Is there any particular reason to bother with an overpriced remake of the same old game? Is there a reason for worrying about 4KUHD textures on a game where the aesthetic is cartoony? If you're a 9 year old who's never played, and it's all on mom's dime, I could see being tricked into buying it by the advertisers, but why is anyone else excited about it?
- Any interest I had in the game, which was already fairly minimal, was completely obliterated when the price was announced.
- I played the hell out of the first Borderlands (including New Game+ across all expansions), but promptly bounced off 2 & Pre-Sequel because it literally just felt like more of the same and I was already sated.
  BL3 and now BL4 are literally just more of the same, but with ever increasingly more egregious monetisation.
  
  2 was good because of the Handsome Hack commentary.
- 30 seconds of fun repeated, the golden rule. The games fun as fuck.
- Started with 2, liked it, hated 3, now playing 4 since yesterday with a friend and gameplay wise it has a bunch of changes/improvements. So if someone enjoys the gameplay its good. I mean cod and battlefield and fifa are also nearly the same game every time ;)
  
  Yeah, you won't hear us defending those games either ;)

Guys who wear bowties are not smart, but desperately need people to think they are.
- Bowties are fine for formal (social) occasions like weddings and parties. Wearing them around every day is weird. Wearing them to work is (generally) weird.
  Committing to wearing them everywhere and STILL buying pre-tied ones and not learning how to tie them yourself all while being a mega douche is cringe af.
  
  Yeah, learn to tie them if you're going to make it part of your personality.
- I present to you bill nye as a counter argument
  
  Honestly, I think he might actually fall into the category of cares more about appearing smart than being smart. Not to say he's dumb, but I do get the sense the reputation is very important to him
- What french fuckin year is it where ANYONE feels the NEED to wear a bowtie?! You can just wear your boxers as a neckerchief if you like...

Gearbox was been scummy for a while now. Customers can learn to stop giving them money or can keep putting up with this.
- Eh, the people are dumb as fuck and will keep buying their slop. Just look at Nintendo, one of the most horrible companies out there, releasing the same 5 games over and over again, but the idiots keep buying. They will keep buying their Mario Kart until it's $200 a month
- They destroyed the first update for risk of rain 2 when they bought it as well. They kinda made my favourite game a lot worse
- Borderlands 3 kinda sucked it. I realized when I played it that they had hit peak during Borderlands 2.

They're using a poorly made graphics engine and got scammed into implementing malware into their game.
- For a AAA game Unreal 5 seems like a reasonable choice for an engine because you have access to Epic Games devs.

He's looking like the Anti-Gaben Newell in that picture there.

He can deep-throat my dad's days-dead dog's decaying dong.
- Damn, dude! 😂

All this stuff sounds like Randy Pitchford building out his personal brand.
I wish anything involving Pitchford was not reported on (at all).

I wasn't too keen on that $70 basic version price tag in the first place, so thanks Randy. Can't wait for it to be $39.99
- Why stop there? Pretty sure BL3 was free at some point recently.

Dude is such a tool.

A "Pitchford" - the meme of Randall Pitchford always, ALWAYS being an ass. This isn't anything new, just "fresh" again.

How is it on console though? Better on PS5 or Xbox?
- https://insider-gaming.com/borderlands-4-console-performance-how-does-borderlands-4-run-on-ps5-xbox-series-xs/
  Take from that what you will.
  Nothing from digital foundry yet.
  
  DF is who I'm waiting on, but from what I'm hearing, they didn't send reviewer codes so it's all delayed and that's never a good sign.
- I've seen multiple people report they have to reboot after an hour or two or play because it has memory leak issues.

This has been there already with Ubisoft games. It wont end well for the IP and also, the main problem is Randy Pitchford. That problem wont be fixed any time soon.

Soooo, is Borderlands 4 cracked yet?

You got it!

I have accepted reality and not purchased the game.
Thanks for the heads up Bobandy.

I played the first one but after that the formula felt pretty samey and I was bored of it. Would a fourth Borderlands game even be good if it wasn't laggy?
- Don't let the name fool you, it's the sixth game.

Randy needs to get comfy with the fact that he may go broke. Do what the doctors in goa (a state in India) did to their health minister. But in this case impact his income & force him to grovel.

Never bought any of the Borderlands games and probably never will.
- weird flex but okay
  
  That’s okay, I love being weird.

153 comments