Baldur's Gate 3 publishing director feels "bad" for Borderlands 4 devs "who are just trying really hard to make players happy" as Randy Pitchford fights back against performance criticism

Borderlands 4 character art of Amon
(Image credit: Gearbox)

Baldur's Gate 3's publishing director Michael Douse has commented on the ongoing Randy Pitchford crashout, and is pretty conflicted on it.

Borderlands 4 launched to a series best launch on Steam, but despite that, PC performance issues have been the main point of discussion among fans, and more importantly from Gearbox boss Randy Pitchford, who hasn't stopped tweeting about them. Pitchford has been saying some definitely-not-PR-approved lines, including "I bet you have emotions and expectations that you feel aren't sufficiently attended to," and "please get a refund from Steam if you aren't happy,"

Responding to this, one Twitter user argues: "Let Uncle Randy free! I don't want a Corpo, HR approved boilerplate response," to which the Larian publishing director says: "I agree! It's nice to see a man let his freak flag fly."

However, it's not as simple as finding the ongoing crashout funny and interesting, because as Douse notes, "I feel bad for his teams who are just trying really hard to make players happy." Which, considering the Borderlands 4 boss told players "please get a refund" and "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," that follow-up is even more pertinent.

While I do somewhat agree with Douse that it's nice to see a developer being able to speak freely in a way that doesn't feel like boilerplate PR speak, Pitchford's Twitter rants have definitely blown things up from being your standard bad PC performance complaints to a bit of a show.

Be sure to check out Borderlands 4 review, as well as our Borderlands 4 tips if you're just getting started.

Scott McCrae
Contributor

Scott has been freelancing for over three years across a number of different gaming publications, first appearing on GamesRadar+ in 2024. He has also written for the likes of PC Gamer, Eurogamer, VG247, Play, TechRadar, and others. He's typically rambling about Metal Gear Solid, God Hand, or any other PS2-era titles that rarely (if ever) get sequels.

You must confirm your public display name before commenting

Please logout and then login again, you will then be prompted to enter your display name.