Borderlands 4 is officially out – almost a day early for some people, and players on Steam have shown up in droves to jump into the latest loot shooter from Gearbox. The game has not only done very well for itself in terms of player activity, it also easily beat all other Borderlands games.
Steam user reviews, however, aren’t as glowing as you might expect.
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It seems Gearbox’s decision to make a more grounded game with Borderlands 4, and step away from referential humour and internet slang has worked in its favour. Over on Steam, the game peaked at 207,479 concurrent players (via SteamDB) just hours after it went live.
Considering some of the launch times, and the fact it wasn’t out on consoles at that time, there’s every chance the weekend will give these numbers a boost. Indeed, even if that’s the highest the peak concurrent is going to get, it’s still better than every other Borderlands game that came before, with its closest contender being Borderlands 2, having peaked at 124,678 concurrent players.
Borderlands 4’s numbers were certainly good enough to get into Steam’s top five most played games, and it’s currently Steam’s number one best-seller worldwide, having jumped up seven spots this week.
Image credit: Gearbox Software, 2K Games.
It doesn’t seem like everyone is happy with the game, however. Judging by its current Steam user review rating of Mixed (based on 5,435 reviews), only 62% had positive things to say about the co-op loot shooter.
While some of the negative reviews touch on narrative and gameplay content, the vast majority lament the game’s technical state. Borderlands 4’s long (and frequent) shader compilation pauses come up several times, as do your typical Unreal Engine navigational stutter. In fact, stutter issues are so common that some have taken to calling it Stutterlands 4.
This is another case of an Unreal Engine 5 game getting lambasted for its technical issues, and it’s actually become something of a nonestarter for players, many of whom get into the game expecting to run into problems just because of its use of Epic’s game engine.
It’s worth keeping in mind that Borderlands 3 had its fair share of technical issues, too, which took Gearbox a while to completely iron out. It’s quite possible this will eventually be the case for Borderlands 4, especially once Denuvo gets removed. Only time will tell.