Borderlands 4’s Randy Pitchford seeks to justify $80 “real fans” comment

Earlier this week, Gearbox CEO Randy Pitchford made headlines, when a comment he had made on social media started making the rounds online. The comment was in response to one potential Borderlands 4 buyer, who in a post on X said “this game better not be 80 dollars”. Pitchford then gave a slightly tone deaf reply, saying “real fans” would find a way to get their hands on a copy of the game no matter how much it cost.

Pitchford’s comment was met with a certain amount of backlash, and now the Gearbox head has shared another post in a bid to unmuddy the waters.

“If you want the truth, here it is,” he wrote, with an accompanying video from an earlier interview where he was asked how much Borderlands 4 would retail for. Here, the Gearbox exec admitted he did not know how much Borderlands 4 will cost.

“It’s an interesting time, right,” Pitchford said. “On one level, we’ve got a competitive market place. The people who make those choices want to sell as many units as possible, and they want to be careful about people who are price sensitive. So, there are some folks who don’t want to see prices go up, even the ones deciding what the prices are.”

He went on to state that there are also “other folks accepting the reality that game budgets are increasing, and there’s tariffs for the retail packaging” to consider.

“It’s getting gnarly out there, guys,” Pitchford said, adding Borderlands 4 has “more than twice” the development budget of its series predecessor. He reiterated that he really doesn’t know the price, but when pre-orders go live, that’s when we will all know how much Borderlands 4 will cost.

“Here’s the philosophy we have, whatever the price is: we’re entertainers. Yes, we want to get more resources so we can make bigger and better games – there is a reason why Borderlands 4 is so awesome,” the studio head went on. “It’s because you guys showed up and supported Borderlands 3. And, we had the budget, we could more than double the budget and feel confident in that.”

He said as a group of “artists”, the studio wants everyone to be able to get their hands on Borderlands 4. “We want to make it as easy as possible for everybody to enjoy what we are creating” and that everyone who plays a Gearbox game feels like they “got the better end of the bargain”.

In the video, Pitchford said “we’re going to have a price set soon, and it might be the new price that Nintendo and Microsoft have led with” or “it might be that we stay back”. Either way, “it’s going to be the people at the publishing house that decide that”.

Borderlands 4 is set to launch across PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X/S on 12th September after Take-Two announced it was bringing its release forward. Borderlands 4 will introduce four new Vault Hunters on its release, alongside a new horde known as the Rippers.