Borderlands 3 rockets up Steam's best-sellers chart to its highest concurrent player counts all year after the Borderlands movie's launch

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An unintended side-effect

Borderlands 3
(Image credit: 2K Games)

The Borderlands movie might have been a massive flop, but Gearbox's games are having a lovely resurgence in the aftermath of the movie's underwhelming launch.

The Borderlands movie just launched last week, and - spoiler alert - it's not great. Our Borderlands review lambasted it as "a frenetic and disorderly shambles gamers are likely to loathe," granting it just two stars. Other critics didn't love it either - at one point the Borderlands movie held an astounding 0% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes from critics. 

Despite this stinker, it's not all bad news for Gearbox, developer of the Borderlands games. It turns out that the looter shooter series is having a bit of resurgence on Steam in the wake of the Borderlands movie, and I can only guess it's because moviegoers wanted to see if the series offered anything worthwhile after Eli Roth's adaptation.

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According to SteamDB for example, Borderlands 3 just hit a peak Steam concurrent player count of 12,379, its highest peak concurrent player count since February 2023. Additionally, SteamDB has Borderlands 2 rising to 7,938 peak Steam players over the last few days, the shooter's highest peak concurrent player count since February 2021.

If you head over to the Steam top-sellers chart, you can see Borderlands 3 is currently outselling the likes of Baldur's Gate 3 and God of War, and while Borderlands 2 is significantly further down the chart, it's still outselling hits like Stardew Valley, Rainbow Six Siege, and Gearbox's own Tiny Tina's Wonderlands. It probably helps that both games are hugely discounted - Borderlands 3 with 90% off, and Borderlands 2 with 75% off.

It's a weirdly good time to get into Borderlands 3 - or to return to the shooter if you're a veteran player. A new update last week added the ability for players to skip right to the very end of the game, provided they've already got a max level character - so you can basically go right to Borderlands 3's endgame with a different character.

Here are 39 of the biggest Borderlands movie Easter eggs and game references.

Hirun Cryer
Hirun Cryer
Freelance Writer

Hirun Cryer is a freelance reporter and writer with Gamesradar+ based out of U.K. After earning a degree in American History specializing in journalism, cinema, literature, and history, he stepped into the games writing world, with a focus on shooters, indie games, and RPGs, and has since been the recipient of the MCV 30 Under 30 award for 2021. In his spare time he freelances with other outlets around the industry, practices Japanese, and enjoys contemporary manga and anime.