Randy Pitchford makes people mad again by warning that Borderlands 4 will take even longer to get deep discounts than Borderlands 3 did

Borderlands 3 is 95% off on Steam right now, dropping it to just $3—its lowest price ever, and one of the best deals in the 2025 Steam Summer Sale. And somehow, that screamingly good price has turned into yet another opportunity for Gearbox boss Randy Pitchford to annoy Borderlands fans on social media.

"Sales like this and Borderlands 3 showing up on console subscription programs took over 5 years from the game's launch to happen," Pitchford wrote on X. "Take advantage when it's here!"

Good advice—Borderlands 3 has been around since 2019 so there's a good chance you've already got it, but if you don't, hey, three dollars. Thank you, Randy, for bringing this to our attention.

Sales like this and Borderlands 3 showing up on console subscription programs took over 5 years from the game&rsquo;s launch to happen. Take advantage when it&rsquo;s here! And to set expectations, it will be even longer before this kind of thing happens in the next cycle with Borderlands 4. — (Image credit: Randy Pitchford (Twitter))

To be fair, I think that's pretty innocuous too, and quite possibly accurate, unless Borderlands 4 bombs for some reason, and at this point it seems unlikely. PC Gamer's Tyler Wilde spent a few hours playing a pre-release build in May and found it not transformative, but solidly consistent—which I think is what a lot of Borderlands fans want.

At the same time, while it's probably too much to describe Pitchford's message as a gently implied threat, there's a lot of residual sensitivity over Borderlands 4 pricing out there courtesy of Pitchford's prior social media hoedown, in which he needlessly floated the spectre of a potential $80 cost for the game. That ultimately came to nothing, but not before a week of throwing hands with randos over it.

So I suspect some of that was reflected in some of the responses to Pitchford's more recent message—sparked not by the likelihood that Borderlands 4 won't see any sort of deep discount for years to come, but because Randy just will not stop picking at the scab.

"You and your team make some of my favorite games, but you make it really hard to like you when you spit crap out like this. It's like you never learn," Tanner_AZ303 replied.

"I swear he is absolutely terrible at marketing," Alacod1 wrote. "Why did this need to be said like this?"

"U really do like to throw water on your own fire Randy," Smokininja added, while MaqApple suggested, "I think you just need to work on your wording boss."

It spirals down from there, as threads on X tend to: A few messages are supportive of Pitchford's urge to "help," a few are outright abuse, some expressed doubt that it will really take all that long for Borderlands 4 to get the deep sale treatment, and of course there are all sorts of individual requests or demands of the game.

There are also complaints about both Borderlands 3 and BL4 being "spyware," a sensational allegation spurred by a recent change to Take-Two Interactive's EULA that spawned a review bombing campaign across the entire Borderlands series earlier this month. Those claims no doubt also helped prompt some of the negativity in the reactions to Pitchford's message.

To Pitchford's credit and detriment in equal measure, he's posting through it, cheerfully responding to messages good and bad—in some cases clarifying his position, and in others just messing with people a bit. I know that urge, and I respect his commitment to it, but his willingness to wade into the fray (and apparent inability to avoid stepping on rakes) is what leads to this sort of thing.

Will it have any sort of material impact on the success of Borderlands 4? Probably not. Even so, as Lincoln put it last month, "choosing not to tweet is often the wiser decision." But what fun is that, right?

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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.

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