One of the “continuing stories” that we have tracked and reported on throughout the back half of 2025 is the curious case of Borderlands 4 and its player count. At first, the game seemed poised for a huge victory lap. After all, the title sold a few million in its opening days, reviews were solid, and things seemed to be a huge upgrade over what happened with the previous entry. However, almost immediately, things started to go downhill. Gamers who actually played the title in its “true form” noted all sorts of issues with it, and those issues continue to this day in many forms. Then, Take-Two Interactive revealed that sales for the game weren’t as good as they’d hoped they would be. Finally, the player count plummeted in less than a month.
There have been issues with the post-launch content as well, with the game not exactly “riveting” players to come back and enjoy the title when new things arrive. For example, the “Bounty Hunter Pack 1” came out not too long ago and was actually given out for free, which caused a different controversy, and it didn’t do much for the player count. Fast forward to now, and as Forbes notes, the first batch of the “Invincible” content has dropped, and the player count continues to not move much.
According to them, after the content dropped, PC play for Borderlands 4 went from 6700 to 9800. Granted, that’s basically a 50% increase, but for a AAA title to drop new content and NOT be over 10K in players? Yeah, that’s not that good at all. Plus, this past weekend, the game was apparently at 11K, and that was just for the standard game! As a result, it’s fair to think that this new content didn’t attract players in the slightest, and that’s definitely not what Gearbox Software wants to hear.
Another reason that this can be perceived as a huge “L” for the developer is that, unlike the Bounty Hunter Pack, which was intentionally light on content, the first Invincible update had much to offer players. For example, it had the first “Invincible” boss in Bloomreaper, it added not one but two new difficulty modes, plenty of legendary weapons to try and obtain, new cutscenes, and more.
Yet, the reception online for the content hasn’t been too positive. Now, could things turn around by the weekend? Absolutely. It could merely be a case of “bad timing,” and that gamers are waiting for the chance to play the game again. Time will tell.
