"The game is pretty damn optimal" – Randy Pitchford responds to Borderlands 4 PC performance complaints

Gearbox Software boss Randy Pitchford has been busy defending Borderlands 4 against complaints of poor game performance on PC. He said the game was “pretty darn optimal” and that people shouldn’t expect to be able to run it in huge resolutions at max settings and get incredible frame-rates.

“Every PC gamer must accept the reality of the relationship between their hardware and what the software they are running is doing,” Pitchford wrote on X. “We have made an amazing and fun and huge looter shooter campaign game. The game is pretty damn optimal – which means that the software is doing what we want without wasteful cycles on bad processes.

“With Borderlands 4, every PC gamer has a LOT of tools to balance their preferences between FPS, resolution, and rendering features. If you aren’t happy with the balance between these things you are experiencing, please tune to your preferences using the tools available to you.”

It’s “absolutely reasonable” for a looter shooter like Borderlands 4 to focus on achieving 60 frames-per-second at recommended settings, he said, presumably meaning rather than anything higher. But you can’t have it all. If you want all the visual effects and a very high resolution, you’ll have to trade-off against frame-rate, he said, and vice versa.