Gearbox boss Randy Pitchford is "testing Borderlands 4 on Steam," and just wanted to check and see if you can tell

Borderlands 4 is due out this year, and it seems nobody's more excited about that fact than Gearbox boss Randy Pitchford. He's spent months enthusiastically teasing the new looter shooter on social media, and now he's coyly asking if you can see that he's playing the game on Steam.

"When I’m testing Borderlands 4 on Steam," Pitchford asks on Twitter, "can you guys who can see my account on a friends list see that I am playing Borderlands 4?" The results of the attached poll are currently 17.5% "yes," 10.1% "no," and 72.4% "what now?" I have to imagine Pitchford would get a better answer to this question just by directly asking somebody who's on his Steam friends list, and I suspect he knows that too.

No, my guess is that Pitchford is just throwing some red meat to hungry Borderlands fans by teasing that the new game is far enough along to be in testing on Steam. Judging by the replies to that tweet, the bait is working as intended.

The fact that Borderlands 4 is coming to Steam on launch is, itself, old but notable news. Borderlands 3 was rather controversially a timed Epic Games Store exclusive on PC, and around the time of that deal Pitchford hinted that Steam might soon be a "dying store." Obviously, that prediction didn't pan out, which Pitchford copped to earlier this year. At least we can take any Steam versus Epic controversy out of Borderlands 4's eventual launch.

Borderlands 4 studio Gearbox gave the devs custom cast iron skillets for Christmas because "we f***ing cooked."