"The Game Is the Game": Randy Pitchford Tells Unhappy Borderlands 4 Players to Get a Refund
In what has become the most predictable train wreck of 2025, the Randy Pitchford Meltdown Tour has added a bold new stop: telling customers to fuck off.
The public crashout from the Gearbox CEO over Borderlands 4's rocky PC performance continues unabated. After spending last week telling players their expectations were simply too high, his new, enlightened PR strategy is to tell anyone unhappy with the game to just get a refund and go away.
The Customer Is Always Wrong
In a series of replies to players complaining about the game's optimization, Pitchford has decided to double down. When a user expressed frustration that the only solution offered was to use performance-boosting tech like DLSS, Pitchford was blunt.
"You can do whatever you want. The game is the game. Please get a refund from Steam if you aren't happy with it," he wrote, before launching into a bizarre analogy about not putting a "Ferrari engine in a monster truck".
He then twisted the knife. "I'm sorry you don't like being told to use DLSS, but that is the way," he continued. "If you're not happy using the tools available to you to improve frame rate and you're not happy with the frame rate you have, you should play a different game".
A Masterclass in How to Lose Fans
This isn't just a one-off bad tweet. It's the continuation of a week-long tirade where Pitchford has blamed players for being "4k stubborn" and condescendingly told them their "emotions and expectations" weren't being attended to.
Instead of, you know, addressing the widespread technical issues of his multi-million dollar product, he's decided the problem is the customers. It's a bold, deeply arrogant, and frankly baffling way to handle legitimate criticism.
A League of His Own
This kind of behavior is almost unheard of. The article from GamesRadar rightly points out the contrast with the Arrowhead CEO, who was famously chewed out by PlayStation for telling people not to buy Helldivers 2 when the servers were on fire.
Most companies want you to buy their game. Randy Pitchford, apparently, could not care less. It's clear there's no one at Gearbox who can take his phone away from him.
The sad part is that Borderlands 4 is, by most accounts, a pretty good game buried under these technical problems. But the real story has become the CEO's baffling, ongoing public tantrum. He's actively alienating the very people who bought his product, and it's a wild, self-destructive thing to watch.