Borderlands 4’s sales controversy is proof the industry needs transparency, even though it won’t listen to what Randy Pitchford has to say

Transparency is a beautiful, often-demanded quality in the gaming industry, but transparency also needs a degree of understanding. It’s hard for anyone to understand game development, and it’s hard to communicate that to someone who lacks understanding. That’s true of everything, but still, transparency in the gaming world should be celebrated. Instead, transparency is often met with pitchforks. The recurring controversy around Randy Pitchford and Borderlands 4 is evidence of that.

Now, there are plenty of reasons to criticize Pitchford. As the president and CEO of Gearbox, he is the one who should be criticized and not the myriad of developers who work under his leadership. That’s just leadership 101, but debacle after debacle, it seems Pitchford has tried to be open and transparent with the wider Borderlands 4/gaming community to be met, all too often, with hostility. To demand transparency but to meet unfortunate news, realistic explanations, and honest communication with opportunistic, disproportionate, and bad-faith reactions is only going to harm transparency in the future.

Don’t Expect Sales on Borderlands 4

The latest debacle comes by way of responses to one of Pitchford’s tweets. Quoting a post about Borderlands 3 on Steam Summer Sale, Pitchford points out how sales like this and showing up in console subscription programs like PS Plus and Xbox Game Pass took over five years. He then continues by adding, “To set expectations, it will be even longer before this kind of thing happens in the next cycle with Borderlands 4.” Setting expectations is a great thing in an industry, and the reason for this lack of foreseeable sales is obvious: Pitchford has been open about the fact that Borderlands 4 has more than twice the development budget than Borderlands 3.

Borderlands 4 has been in development for “several years.”
It is developed by Gearbox and published by 2K.
Costs have gone up considerably.
AAA budgets have ballooned across the industry over the past several years.

There’s certainly a conversation to be had, that continues to be had, about the ballooning development costs in the AAA sector of the industry, but Pitchford’s transparency regarding this is welcome. Except when it isn’t. The top comments are all vitriolic remarks, citing Pitchford as bad at marketing, saying that he’s full of crap, and a lot less savory remarks, and Pitchford took the time to reply to several of them. He met the energy of some of them, tried to reason with those who were respectful, and otherwise took a lot on the chin. Pitchford is not marketing Borderlands 4 in tweets like these; he is setting expectations. He is not trying to sell a dream of the next genre-defining looter shooter game on the market, skyrocketing expectations of its fans; he is being transparent. And his seemingly good-faith gestures and remarks have been met with bad-faith readings that assume the worst.

The Gaming Industry Needs Borderlands 4’s Transparency

Again, this isn’t to say to avoid criticizing Pitchford and folks like Pitchford, but criticism where criticism is due. Being open about the fact that sales for Borderlands 4 are unlikely because of ballooning development costs is important information for gamers to have, among a myriad of other reasons. It means, in a wider lens, that AAA cost issues are something that should be important to all these folks who love sales. In a macro lens, it means there are a lot of discussions and confidence that Borderlands 4 will have a strong launch. In all likelihood, if it sells poorly, the powers that be will reverse course on this decision and probably put it on sale quickly. It means the makers of Borderlands 4 are confident in their project, which is always a reason to be excited about a game. The price of Borderlands 4 shows that confidence, too.

A lot of this comes on the back of Randy Pitchford’s tweet about Borderlands 4 maybe costing $80. Some critique for categorizing “real fans” is well-deserved, but even then, the intent didn’t seem to be malicious. Noting the development budget, a lower initial price point means slower returns, which means there were quite a few discussions around it that no one outside the room is privy to. His tweet had some poor word choice, but it was not malicious. It was Pitchford being transparent, and transparency is good.

The reality is: while discussions about game pricing and ballooning development costs are going to continue, the average gamer should be involved in that discussion. For that to happen, actual game makers need to be transparent, and being transparent means that folks will stumble and misspeak. If transparency is met in bad faith, then many others will simply not engage in it. And a lack of transparency and community interaction can only make a good game worse; meanwhile, the good is obvious—Gearbox added Borderlands 4‘s combat radar through open and transparent conversations with its community. The company’s continued open communication and transparency should be celebrated, not vilified.