Gearbox CEO Randy Pitchford has pushed back hard against criticism of Borderlands 4’s demanding PC performance, calling the recently released looter shooter a “premium game made for premium gamers.” In a recent flurry of posts on X, he warned that trying to run the game on outdated or under-powered hardware is like “driving a monster truck with a leaf blower’s motor.”
However, many players argue that the problems aren’t limited to low-end systems. Even rigs with RTX 5090 GPUs are reportedly struggling to break the 120 FPS mark, while 40-series cards (still above the recommended requirements) are having trouble holding a stable 60 FPS. That gap between marketing and reality has fueled frustration, with players insisting the issue isn’t just user hardware, but optimization.
He suggested that players struggling with 4K should lower resolution to 1440p, yet reports claim the game’s recommended spec build already struggles at 1080p. For a game billed as “premium,” the optics of telling players to aim for lower resolution obviously haven’t landed well with the community.
Minimum and recommended specs for Borderlands 4 list an eight-core CPU, 16 GB RAM, SSD storage, and an RTX 2070 / RX 5700 XT as the floor, with an RTX 3080 / RX 6800 XT recommended for 1440p @ 60 FPS. Still, widespread reports of stuttering, crashing, and underwhelming performance on far more powerful setups have dominated discussion since launch.
The Gearbox head also offered DLSS and upscaling as ways to stabilize frame rates while Gearbox continues to work on patches aimed at optimization. With Borderlands 4 coming to Nintendo’s Switch 2 on October 3, it’s clear the performance debate and backlash won’t be dying down anytime soon.
