Borderlands 3 goes free on the Epic Store

(Image credit: Gearbox Software)

Last week's Epic Games Store freebie was a big one, and this week's is even bigger. The "mystery game" locked behind the vault in last week's tease has been revealed as Borderlands 3, Gearbox's multi-million-selling off-world looter-shooter.

The Epic giveaway served as an uncomfortable reminder for several of us here at PC Gamer that Borderlands 3 is actually three years old, having been released in 2019. It's not an overly new game, then (despite feeling like one), but it is a major hit. It was the fastest-selling game in the history of publisher 2K Games, breaking five million sales in just five days, and has surpassed 15 million sales since then. It also kicked off another major "new franchise" in the form of the Tiny Tiny's Wonderlands, which actually outperformed 2K's expectations following its launch in March.

Interestingly, we liked, but definitely did not love, Borderlands 3 when it first came out: The shooting was good, but the humor, "stuck in the late '00s, when surface level vulgarity was enough to qualify as "edgy" was not.

"It's simultaneously repulsive and compulsive, an FPS RPG that excels when its weapon generation system spits out guns that feels great to shoot, adorned with broken attributes capable of turning hordes of goons, bugs, and soldiers into clouds of red mist, elemental particles, explosions, and big damage numbers," we wrote in a 63% review. "Then it tells one of its many long, bad jokes and the cloud dissipates."

You really can't go wrong at the price, though.

Borderlands 3 is free on the Epic Store until May 26. Next week's freebie could be a big one too—like Borderlands 3, it's being held in the vault as a mystery game.

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Andy has been gaming on PCs from the very beginning, starting as a youngster with text adventures and primitive action games on a cassette-based TRS80. From there he graduated to the glory days of Sierra Online adventures and Microprose sims, ran a local BBS, learned how to build PCs, and developed a longstanding love of RPGs, immersive sims, and shooters. He began writing videogame news in 2007 for The Escapist and somehow managed to avoid getting fired until 2014, when he joined the storied ranks of PC Gamer. He covers all aspects of the industry, from new game announcements and patch notes to legal disputes, Twitch beefs, esports, and Henry Cavill. Lots of Henry Cavill.