One of the “newer metrics” that many people use to try to measure success in the gaming industry is “player count.” No, not sales, as that’s a different thing. Instead, we’re talking about the actual player count that a game has at any point in time. First off, that number can be used to help back up sales of a game, especially on things like Steam, but it can also highlight how many players are “sticking around” for the long term because they like the game that much. That brings us to Borderlands 4, which, sadly, hasn’t had the best player count of late.
As we talked about a while back, the game has lost basically 95% of its player base, and now, as we talked about earlier today, the game has some serious Black Friday deals going on, despite the game only being two months old! That has a lot of people scratching their heads as to what happened to a game that was so highly anticipated. Thankfully, or perhaps sadly, the answers are pretty obvious when you look at what’s happened from then to now.
First and foremost, let’s talk about the game itself. Borderlands 4 is a title that is a single-player narrative-driven experience mixed with multiplayer elements like co-op. That means that when you beat the main campaign…that’s pretty much the bulk of the content. Yes, there are the “completionist runs” that many can choose to do, but not everyone wants to 100% a game, especially when loot drops aren’t exactly the kindest to players. Just saying.
The second issue is the game’s overall stability. From launch, Gearbox Software has had a fight on its hands with keeping the game stable enough to play, including massive framerate drops, lots of glitches, and so on. Gamers called them out repeatedly for that, and it didn’t help that things kept being released in a broken state with the post-launch content.
Oh, and that’s another thing to talk about, as that content, and the content that is teased for the end of 2025 and the beginning of 2026…wasn’t that exciting. Yes, there is a new Vault Hunter and bosses to fight, but that won’t appeal to everyone, especially with how long they have to wait for some of them.
When it really comes down to it, Gearbox Software hasn’t done its best to keep players truly invested in their game, and until they release something big to bring them all back…they’re likely fine with moving on to bigger and better game experiences.
