Borderlands 4 performance issues have been "pretty stressful," admits dev, but Gearbox has done "a pretty good job" fixing them
"I feel like that's part of what our jobs are"
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It feels a little weird that, six months on from launch, we're still talking about Borderlands 4's notorious PC performance issues, but to be fair, it's been developer Gearbox itself dredging up the issue in recent days. Just this week, the studio admitted it still has more work to do on PC optimization, and now, one of the game's developers is opening up about the toll it's taken on a personal level.
"I'd be lying if I said it wasn't a little stressful, but at the same time, I feel like that's part of what our jobs are," managing producer Eli Luna tells IGN. "When you're organizing these groups of people and nothing's really done in an assembly line, we don't wait for one part to be done, then we hand it off to the next part. Everybody's working simultaneously. And so trying to balance all that as we're moving along is always going to be a real challenge no matter what."
That said, Gearbox has genuinely put in the work with regards to PC performance, having released several targeted patches in the months since launch, and that's something Luna isn't shy to point out.
"I feel like we did a pretty good job, as looking at the 200 days [since launch]. We roughly got about 20% increase in FPS on just our rec spec," Luna says. "So I feel like we have done a pretty good job of taking the feedback, seeing what's there, trying to address it as best as we can."
Still, Luna echoes recent Gearbox comments that the job isn't finished, saying the devs still have "plenty of work to still do that we're doing throughout the rest of the year because we have more content coming out."
Specifically, Gearbox recently predicted this week's Borderlands 4 patch, which launched alongside the new Mad Ellie and the Vault of the Damned DLC, would result in a "20% gain in average frame rates across different PC specs," a 50% reduction in crash rates, and "improvements to greatly improve UI efficiency."
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After earning an English degree from ASU, I worked as a corporate copy editor while freelancing for places like SFX Magazine, Screen Rant, Game Revolution, and MMORPG on the side. I got my big break here in 2019 with a freelance news gig, and I was hired on as GamesRadar's west coast Staff Writer in 2021. That means I'm responsible for managing the site's western regional executive branch, AKA my home office, and writing about whatever horror game I'm too afraid to finish.
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