Randy Pitchford challenged players to break the Borderlands 4 servers over the weekend, offering free DLC for anyone who takes part

HOLLYWOOD, CALIFORNIA - AUGUST 06: (L-R) Eli Roth and Randy Pitchford attend the after party for the "Borderlands" Los Angeles Fan Event at Dave & Buster's on August 06, 2024 in Hollywood, California.
(Image credit: Jon Kopaloff/Getty Images for Lionsgate)

Borderlands 4 is currently the top-selling game on Steam, and peaked at 288,130 concurrent players today. This in spite of the fact that it's a bit of a stuffer-fest. But while the framerate may be nothing to write home about, Gearbox CEO Randy Pitchford is so confident in the stability of the Borderlands 4 servers that he's encouraging players to log on and try to break them.

"I'm telling you that it's going to be VERY unlikely you guys can be enough people to break the backend and take our game down", Pitchford wrote on the hatesite formerly known as Twitter. "I know there have been some high profile backend on-line systems failing around big AAA game launches, but not this one."

Pitchford is so convinced the servers will be able to take whatever gets thrown at them that he said, "I'll find a way somehow to reward everyone and to make it up to everyone for showing me that it can break." And even if they don't break, players who jump in this weekend will get access to the Break Free cosmetics pack.

Free stuff is nice, and so is hearing the hard-working folks behind the servers get a shout-out. As Pitchford said, "our on-line team rules." But boasting about a game's online stability when it doesn't run great even if you're playing solo seems kind of like pointing out how nice the curtains are while your living room is catching fire.

Borderlands 4Borderlands 4 Shift codesBorderlands 4 Harlowe buildsBorderlands 4 Rafa buildsBorderlands 4 Vex buildsBorderlands 4 Amon builds

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Borderlands 4 Vex builds: The spooky Siren
Borderlands 4 Amon builds: The fierce Forgeknight

Jody Macgregor
Weekend/AU Editor

Jody's first computer was a Commodore 64, so he remembers having to use a code wheel to play Pool of Radiance. A former music journalist who interviewed everyone from Giorgio Moroder to Trent Reznor, Jody also co-hosted Australia's first radio show about videogames, Zed Games. He's written for Rock Paper Shotgun, The Big Issue, GamesRadar, Zam, Glixel, Five Out of Ten Magazine, and Playboy.com, whose cheques with the bunny logo made for fun conversations at the bank. Jody's first article for PC Gamer was about the audio of Alien Isolation, published in 2015, and since then he's written about why Silent Hill belongs on PC, why Recettear: An Item Shop's Tale is the best fantasy shopkeeper tycoon game, and how weird Lost Ark can get. Jody edited PC Gamer Indie from 2017 to 2018, and he eventually lived up to his promise to play every Warhammer videogame.

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