Borderlands 4’s 1st Raid Boss, Bloomreaper The Invincible, Shadow Drops Today

Gearbox has confirmed that Bloomreaper is coming in Borderlands 4, already.

The official Borderlands Twitter account made this announcement:

Hope your builds are ready, Vault Hunters.

Your first free Raid Boss, Bloomreaper the Invincible, drops in a Major Update at 9 a.m. PT tomorrow, alongside a variety of improvements across gameplay, summons behavior, gear, and visuals.

Why Shadowdrop Bloomreaper?

Of course, the big question in everyone’s mind is why did Gearbox drop Bloomreaper now? In particular, they chose to make this drop a day after Grand Theft Auto Online’s A Safehouse in the Hills update.

Now, we don’t think that Take-Two has to demand that their studios coordinate their release plans between each other. That’s potentially troublesome for these studios and their prospects for profitability.

On top of that, these content releases are not as big as full game releases. It makes sense for live service games to release content at the same time as each other all the time.

Finally, the overlap between Borderlands 4 and Grand Theft Auto Online isn’t likely to be that big. Gearbox is more likely to see the likes of Destiny 2 and Helldivers 2 as their competition. Grand Theft Auto Online occupies a broader space in community type online games like Fortnite.

Maybe This Isn’t A Coincidence

Based on the timing, it’s possible that this content drop is actually related to today’s The Game Awards. If that’s the case, then we may expect Borderlands 4 to make an appearance on the show.

Maybe Gearbox will show us more of their Season one roadmap. But obviously this stage is a perfect place to showcase their first upcoming DLC Vault Hunter, C4SH.

And really, if this was planned with The Game Awards in mind, then this was scheduled well in advance. Gearbox had to adjust on their roadmap and updates for the past few weeks, if not months, around this upcoming event date.

It’s Sink Or Swim Time For Gearbox Again

As we pointed out before, Gearbox is not making Borderlands 4 as a live service game. It’s true that they have adapted to the current live service era, but this distinction matters.

And that’s because they aren’t facing down the harsh requirements that live service games face. Gearbox is still selling Borderlands 4 at full price, and still selling DLC at full prices. This gates away the ‘free-to-play’ players, but it also means they don’t need to make that much money to be successful.

With all that in mind, today appears to be a very important day for the game. Even if Gearbox isn’t ready to implement cross save cross progression or release the Switch 2 port, they could have a lot of eyes on them in The Game Awards. That possible trailer, which could even be the next C4SH trailer, could bring the players back, or turn them away.