Player numbers are soaring, but performance woes kill the momentum.
Borderlands 4 has officially launched on PC ahead of its global release across all platforms, and it is already storming the Steam charts with numbers that outshine every previous entry in the series.
According to SteamDB, Gearbox’s looter shooter surpassed 142,200 concurrent players on Steam at the time of publication, ranking as the fifth most-played game on Valve’s platform alongside Hollow Knight: Silksong. Within the last 24 hours, it reached an all-time peak of 207,479 concurrent players.
For comparison, Borderlands 2 set a peak of 124,678 players 13 years ago, while Borderlands 3 reached 93,820 five-and-a-half years ago. Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel hit 68,238 a decade ago, and Borderlands: Game of the Year Edition topped out at 23,655.
High player counts, mixed reception
Despite its record-breaking launch, reviews on Steam tell a more complicated story. Borderlands 4 currently holds a Mixed rating of 58.91%, with 59.6% positive reviews and 40.4% negative.
One of the most common criticisms is poor PC optimisation. “None of my friends can get the game to start past main menu,” one Steam user wrote. Another reviewer, Satan Claus, who received the game for free, commented: “The stutters are constant, the crashes are brutal, and it feels like the game fights you harder than the bosses do.”
“Randy Pitchford said fans should have ‘realistic expectations.’ But if ‘realistic expectations’ means paying $70 for a stutter-ridden mess that crashes every few minutes and wrapped in Denuvo DRM that tanks performance even further, then no thanks,” the same reviewer added.
Positive reviews also flagged performance issues but highlighted Borderlands 4’s strengths. Some players praised the improved gunplay and more “serious” story, while others compared it favourably to previous entries. One reviewer said it felt like Borderlands 2 “with a lot of side quests”, while another noted that it offered improvements over Borderlands 3.
Borderlands 4 is off to a headline-grabbing start, but its future on PC may depend less on player counts and more on how quickly its technical flaws are fixed.
