GTA 6 has nothing to do with Borderlands 4's new release date, as Gearbox CEO insists it's "100% the result of confidence," not "any other product's actual or theoretical launch date"

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Gearbox is clearly feeling very good about Borderlands 4's development up to this point

Borderlands 4 Bandit mask
(Image credit: Gearbox)

Borderlands 4 may be releasing earlier than expected, but Gearbox's CEO really wants to make it clear that this has nothing to do with the launch dates of any other games, which is notable as plenty were theorizing if it could help narrow down GTA 6's release.

Yesterday, it was confirmed that Borderlands 4 will be coming out 11 days sooner than previously announced, arriving on September 12 instead of September 23. Previously, Borderlands 4 was set to directly clash with the release of Bungie's upcoming extraction shooter, Marathon, but the game that has been brought up concerning the early launch is GTA 6.

Rockstar Games and Gearbox Software are both owned by Take-Two Interactive, and its CEO, Strauss Zelnick, previously said he thought it was "safe to say that we wouldn’t, and no one would, stack up huge releases unnecessarily." With GTA 6 currently eyeing up a fall 2025 release, this statement was already enough for fans to speculate that Borderlands 4's original launch date could have narrowed down when we can expect Rockstar's upcoming blockbuster to be upon us.

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Fast forward to today, and you can understand why many could question if the move of Gearbox's game might be related to Rockstar's own release, but CEO Randy Pitchford asserts that this isn't the case. "Borderlands 4 shipping early is 100% the result of confidence in the game and development trajectory backed by actual tasks and bug find/fix rates," the Gearbox boss explains on Twitter. "Our decision is literally 0% about any other product's actual or theoretical launch date."

That ties into what Pitchford was saying in his video announcing the news, too, where he said that everything is "going kinda the best-case scenario" behind the scenes of Borderlands 4's development, and added: "The game is awesome, the team is cooking."

Is this latest statement going to stop any GTA 6 fans desperate for news from speculating if there might secretly be more to all this behind the scenes? Most likely not, but that's the official line, and Pitchford is sticking to it. To Gearbox's credit, it seems incredibly unlikely that the devs would be willing to shift their release date like this months in advance unless they were very confident about how things were looking.

We'll be given an even greater look at Borderlands 4 later today (April 30) thanks to its own dedicated State of Play stream, too. It'll be going live at 2pm PT / 5pm ET / 10pm BST / 11pm CEST, so don't miss it.

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Catherine Lewis
Catherine Lewis
Deputy News Editor

I'm GamesRadar+'s Deputy News Editor, working alongside the rest of the news team to deliver cool gaming stories that we love. After spending more hours than I can count filling The University of Sheffield's student newspaper with Pokemon and indie game content, and picking up a degree in Journalism Studies, I started my career at GAMINGbible where I worked as a journalist for over a year and a half. I then became TechRadar Gaming's news writer, where I sourced stories and wrote about all sorts of intriguing topics. In my spare time, you're sure to find me on my Nintendo Switch or PS5 playing through story-driven RPGs like Xenoblade Chronicles and Persona 5 Royal, nuzlocking old Pokemon games, or going for a Victory Royale in Fortnite.

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