Gearbox CEO says PC gamers should “use DLSS” amid Borderlands 4 performance criticism
2K Games releases official “Optimisation Guides” following Borderlands 4 PC performance criticisms
Borderlands 4 is now available on PC, and it has become the latest Unreal Engine 5 game to be criticised for its performance. Simply put, the game’s “Badass” settings are enough to take even the highest-end PC hardware to its knees, making even Nvidia’s mighty RTX 5090 feel low-end without the addition of DLSS Upscaling and DLSS Frame Generation. Gearbox’ CEO, Randy Pitchford, had made several public statements on the matter, making many gamers even angrier about Borderlands 4’s PC performance.
Many PC gamers are calling Borderlands 4 “unoptimised”, and there’s a good reason for that. Most PC gamers need to do extensive tinkering with graphical settings to get this game running at smooth framerates on their PC, even with high-end systems. To make matters worse, unlike Borderlands 3, Borderlands 4 lacks a built-in benchmark, meaning players must adjust their settings during gameplay.
Below, Randy Pitchford says that Borderlands 4 is a “premium game for premium gamers” and has complained that gamers “don’t want to try and mess with settings to make things good enough”.
2K Games has also released dedicated AMD and Nvidia Optimisation Guides for Borderlands 4, hoping to address performance concerns.
(Gearbox CEO Randy Pitchford on Twitter/X)
Need more performance in Borderlands 4? Use DLSS!
Pitchford claims that Borderlands 4 was designed to leverage DLSS on PC. Furthermore, he believes that the latency penalties of DLSS are imperceptible, rendering them a non-issue. This is why Borderlands 4’s optimisation guides recommend frame generation and upscaling to all users, regardless of their hardware configurations.
While recommending upscaling isn’t an issue, Gearbox’s approach is in stark contrast to EA’s with Battlefield 6. EA optimised their game to run well without upscaling, then leveraged upscaling to boost framerates further and make the game playable across more systems.
(Gearbox CEO Randy Pitchford on Twitter/X)
CEO calls gamers complaining about Borderlands 4’s PC performance issues “4K stubborn”
Below, Gearbox’s CEO complains that “a lot of you are dead set on playing at 4K with Ultra max settings using two-three year old hardware”. Honestly, this is a tone-deaf statement, especially given the performance of 2-3 year old PC hardware. Remember, Nvidia’s RTX 4090 was released in 2022.
What must be remembered here is that Gearbox defines what “Ultra Max settings” (or, in Borderlands 4’s case, Badass settings) are. In other posts, Pitchford claimed that gamers needed to make trade-offs between visual settings and performance. It could be argued that Gearbox should have adjusted its game settings to make the game more performant. Perhaps create a new preset with more performant settings and label today’s “Badass” preset as “For Future Hardware”. Ubisoft did something in Frontiers of Pandora with their “Unobtanium” preset.
(Gearbox CEO Randy Pitchford on Twitter/X)
Honestly, it feels like Gearbox wants PC gamers to do Borderlands 4’s optimisation work for them. Calling PC gamers “4K stubborn” when most complaints come from gamers with lower-end hardware targeting lower resolutions is insulting. Yes, this game can run much faster with some adjustments to the settings. However, it can’t be argued that this game gives PC gamers a good first impression. There’s a reason why many PC gamers are angry. Ignoring these issues will only lead to these users resenting you and your products. Borderlands 4 is an incredibly demanding PC game. If you don’t want your game to be called “unoptimised”, perhaps you should consider performance more highly ahead of launch.
You can join the discussion on Borderlands 4’s performance issues on PC on the OC3D Forums.
