After Its CEO Told Everyone to Get a Refund, Gearbox Now Says Fixing Borderlands 4 is Its 'Top Priority'

Well, it seems someone at Gearbox finally wrestled the phone away from Randy Pitchford and decided to, you know, actually address the game's problems.

After a full week of their CEO having a very public and deeply embarrassing meltdown on social media, the actual development team at Gearbox has stepped in to do some damage control. In a new statement, the studio has declared that improving the performance of Borderlands 4 on PC is now its "top priority," with a patch scheduled to release today.

It's a bizarre turn of events, considering the company's official stance just a few days ago was, and I'm paraphrasing here, "sucks to be you, get a refund."

A Fire Hose for a Dumpster Fire

The statement from Gearbox is the kind of professional, measured response you'd expect from a major studio. They've acknowledged the player feedback on both PC and console and are promising patches to improve the experience. A much-requested field of view (FOV) slider for consoles is also apparently in testing.

This all comes after a weekend update that was released without patch notes and seemed to fix absolutely nothing, so I'll remain skeptical until I see the results. The game is still sitting at a "Mixed" review score on Steam as of now.

Meanwhile, on Planet Pitchford...

This professional response from the development team is a stark contrast to the absolute circus their boss has been conducting online. While the devs are working on patches, Randy Pitchford has been busy telling players their expectations are too high, to "code your own engine," that the game is for "premium gamers," and, of course, to "please get a refund from Steam if you aren't happy".

His expert advice for console players experiencing a potential memory leak was to just quit the game and restart it. Truly groundbreaking stuff.

You really have to feel for the developers at Gearbox. While they're presumably working their asses off to fix a technically troubled launch, their CEO is online actively telling people not to play their game and insulting the people who bought it. It's a masterclass in how to turn a technical problem into a full-blown PR catastrophe. Let's hope today's patch can start to undo some of the damage.