$80 for Borderlands 4 too costly? Randy Pitchford says, "If you're a real fan, you'll find a way to make it happen"
$80 for Borderlands 4 too costly? Randy Pitchford says, "If you're a real fan, you'll find a way to make it happen"
Pitchford gives off some strong “do you guys not have phones” energy. He’s so out of touch it’s astounding.
Fuck you, I'm not paying $80 for a game so an executive can get a new Porsche.
I didn’t pay anywhere near $80 for Borderlands 1-3+ all the DLC…. So um. No. I’m in no hurry.
This isn’t all the games but it goes on for like another 2 screens worth for all the DLC…
I bought the full collection last year for like $50. $20 for the first three and all DLC, and like $30 for the complete Borderlands 3 (I had gotten the other ones so decided to just get the full series).
Then I actually went and got Wonderlands and had an actual blast playing it.
This is such a scummy statement I want BL4 less now. Let him eat cake.
Just started expedition 33. Omg. So so good!
Point is... I'll play something else.
Listen here, just wait for Menace to release (By Overhype studios) now that's a proper turn-based game
I will illegally download an illegal version of the game, thanks bye
ugh. i wont even pirate it. gross
Find a way?
Piracy is a way. Thanks for the tip.
Or wait the number of years it takes to be on sale for $20.
Idk. I think gamers are overly upset about $80 games. While I am sympathetic to not wanting the price to go up, the fact of the matter is that brand new video games cost pretty much the same as they did 30 years ago, while the cost of everything else has basically doubled in that time. I know it's probably not what is going to happen but if $80 video games are what it takes to get us away from shitty microtransactions in full price games, then I'm all for it. I know the crowd on Lemmy will just say they should make less profit and do neither but that's just not how the world works right now and nobody is going to do that.
Food for thought- here are some prices in 1996 and today
New video game: 1996- $67 (Super Mario 64), 2025- $70
McDonald's Big Mac meal: 1996- $2.45, 2025-$9.29
Base package Honda Civic: 1996- $10,360, 2025-$24,250
Average apartment - 1996- $550/mo, 2025- $1,540/mo
Median annual income- 1996- $20,109, 2025- $50,200
Doesn't one of these stand out?
And let's take this outside of the myopic view of only looking at inflation.
https://www.visualcapitalist.com/video-game-industry-revenues-by-platform/
Console gaming revenue: 1996 - 7 billion, 2022 - 30 billion
Let's look at specifically Nintendo here since we're talking about Super Mario 64
https://www.nintendo.co.jp/ir/pdf/2001/011121e.pdf
2001, 664 million in profit, adjusted for inflation in 2022 dollars, 1 billion.
2022, 1.7 billion dollars in profit.
You forget that in 1996 the gaming pool was also magnitudes smaller compared to today and despite all of the whining about increased development costs, which I also think is bullshit but that's a different conversation, profits have increased to keep up.
So my opinion, no there's absolutely no justification for a 80 dollar price point when you look at the over all picture.
Dead Island 2 is free on Epic currently, and probably more fun than Borderlands 4; BL 3 wasn't written well, and i assume the same for BL 4. A shame, BL2 is one of my most played FPS
To quote LazyTown: Yar har, fiddle de dee...
Sail the high sea! 🏴☠️🏴☠️🏴☠️
Real fan?
Bitch please. We've put up with your crap for so long and we still play it....
Get out of here with that house shit. Get fucked. Fuck you, and the horse you rode in on. At best, I'll wait for a sale, at worst, I'm never playing your goddamned franchise again because you've run it into the ground with enshittification.
Im always thrown off as a Canadian when I see these headlines because we’ve been paying $80 for games for decades.
Video games haven’t risen in cost with inflation and they’re much better and bigger now so I’m not super upset, but they are now at the point where I won’t buy a game at release or full price. I think the new price here is $93 cause that’s what the new Indiana jones is going for
What I hate most is that the game actually costs $150 and they split it and give you a stripped version for $80. I think gta 4 was the last game i truly felt made sense, game releases, we buy it, story dlc comes out later we get it, transaction over. No online bullshit that tries to keep you paying money into the game without end. Not a game split into little chunks and sold as tiers at release
No one is asking them to grow x50 for every successful game they sell. Sure they have more expenses but how is it in any way relevant to the consumer? There's no shortage of studios increasing budget massively and then shitting the bed when it comes to quality and actual gameplay. They are literally doing that to themselves.
Video games haven’t risen in cost with inflation and they’re much better and bigger now
I agree with the bigger, but not better tbh
The trailer for the new borderlands looked like the most soulless, boring cash grab. Anyone put much time into it yet?
Yarrr Matey, they'll find a way.
Since I didn’t enjoy the handsome collection I wouldn’t buy it at any price, but even for games I do enjoy I wait until they are on sale preferably with the DLCs included
Listen, I unironically love being woke. Accessibility for impairments? Human rights? Equity? Regulations standing in the way of greed? Overrepresentation of minority demographics? Fuck yes to all of that shit. Hell's Yeah.
But the direction of these games have been poor for a lot of reasons. It doesn't feel woke, really, it feels like they want us to believe they aren't Handsome Jack's corporate studio goons like they are.
I can barely justify 50€ for a massive game like Baldur's Gate 3. I'd never pay that much for any other game that is not on this scale. But 80 bucks? The fuck are they thinking?
They don't have any dlc lined up yet so not being to sell you empty promises on top of a normal game price is really tugging at Randy's purse strings.
/s
I knew Randy would fuck up the game somehow.
Seriously, why do they let him talk? The man is a walking PR disaster.
Then again, we should all be asking how the hell he's not in jail for possession of child porn, so I guess this is a pretty minor thing in comparison.
Remember how Randy Pitchford funneled money that was supposed to go to Aliens: Colonial Marines into Borderlands 2 (and Duke Nukem Forever lol)
How the fuck do you leave a USB stick full of child abuse material at a fucking Medieval Times and get away with it?
Laws only apply to us poors.
Weinstein? Diddy? Epstein?
I think the more apt description would be that when you’re got something that makes other people money, then you will be protected. When that ends you’re fair game.
I also agree that the more money you have the better defence you can get, but I don’t believe laws only apply to the poor. That’s hyperbole.
Also, let's not forget the new EULA regarding shift accountsAlso, he made his 'fans" wait while bl3 was only available on the epic store. Fuck this dude, I am done with the franchise.
How is the game being available make people wait? Did PC get the release before consoles?
Steam customers are out of the loop. We could access the game through epic store, but it's a separate account, and not everybody has/want one. Hence the wait to release on Steam.
For small indies it makes sense to publish on the pc epic game store a year earlier to get fundet for simply releasing the game there earlier.
A lot of smaller indies used that time as a kind of early access and got later super popular on steam, the main pc game store.
But for a big studio to do something like this is scummy
They already have a playerbase and a big budget
I dont even know if payment was involved but there is no other reason i can think of that explains this
If I was a real fan.
Nah na na na na na na na na
Thank you Gwen Stefani for saying all the na's for me.
And my way is, wait a few years for the deluxe edition to come out on sale.
Shit, I waited until BL3 was free on PSN, and I'll get around to it someday.
Unfortunately, the real appeal of the Borderlands series is multiplayer. The games are alright in single player mode, but multiplayer is where it really shines. And cracked copies likely won’t work with multiplayer, because they use game servers for matchmaking.
IIRC all of the past ones have worked over LAN, including over a private VPN if you so desire. I definitely played pirated copies of 1 and 2 with my mates. I had no real desire to get very deep into 3 because the campaign storyline was so stupid, but I don't doubt you could.
It's only online matchmaking with randos that you'll be blocked from, which if you ask me is not really that much of a detriment.
Theseus' ship? Borderlands 4 is just the projectfile of borderlands 2 with every part replaced? 😱
Would be better than 3
Yarrrrr
I've found a way.
Randy Pitchfork?
Guess I'm not a real fan. Fuck you Randy. He's such a cunt.
While working on Borderlands 3, the team was severely underpaid. People started quitting, so Randy promised them an “unprecedented company profit-sharing bonus model.” That never got paid—he blamed “higher-than-anticipated development costs and sales not meeting projections.” Borderlands 3 went GOTY, a few dozens millions copies sold. Randy secured a $12M executive bonus for himself. When staff expressed dissatisfaction, Pitchford told them they were free to quit. This was in the middle of the pandemic, and the job market was absolute crap.
I've not heard a single good thing about him. He's just a toolbag through and through.
If anyone deserves for his workers to get unionized, it's this asshole
Aw, he’s telling people to pirate it. What a thoughtful guy.
You wouldn't download a shit to give.
That's legitimately how I read what he was saying at first.
Oh I'll find a way alright.
I agree, but when you wouldn't let Aspyr do a Linux port for BL3, I stopped being a "real fan".
put it on my wish list
buy it for $15 in a year
yawn
I feel like if it drops that much in one year, it's probably a pretty shit game anyway right?
If it being Borderlands 4 wasn't enough of a tip considering the stellar writing we had on pre-sequel and 3.
Arrrrrr!
TIL real Borderlands fans are pirates.
They become pirates if necessary.
Randy pitchford?
THAT Randy Pitchford? The Randy Pitchford that, because he loves magic tricks, downloaded himself some squirt porn (sfw youtube link to moistcritical) on the same thumb drive as company secrets, and then left it at a Medieval Times? The same Randy that grabbed the Claptrap VA by the junk because he was tired of voicing Claptrap for free and had the audacity to ask to be paid so Pitchford tried to intimidate him? The same Randy Pitchford that somehow "lost" millions dollars of Segas money causing Colonial marines to bomb so that they could fund Borderlands 2 and Duke Nukem Forever He's also not above putting journalists who bad mouth him in his games as petty revenge.
Fuck that guy. Fuck anything he says.
Holy shit, I knew about the "magic trick" girl and thought he was a quirky funny man, but assaulting an artist to force them to work for free? What a fucking asshole
If I recall the feud correctly, Eddings previously worked on Claptrap as a favor for free (or next to it). As far as the back and forth on Twitter indicates, when he said he wanted "Id like to be paid this time", Pitchford initially pushed back, and then offered "2x union rates" (whether Pitchford actually offered that or said it on twitter afterward to garner sympathy we may never know), but Eddings refused the offer since gearbox was (at the time) about to make its 3rd lootershooter in a monsterously successful chain and he was one of the most prominent side characters. Thats what triggered Pitchford to attempt to intimidate him in front of a hotel elevator.
Bro is a blight on Gearbox. And no one is sure how or why the board hasn't gotten rid of him.
I hear he also collected child porn, citation needed.
No, no, you don't understand, the girl was doing a magic trick! He only consumed that just barely legal content with professional interest in mind.
Can't wait to play it...in 2035 summer sale. Maybe I'll even get bored in under 2 hours and get the instant refund.
Randy actually needs to see this. It’s reality.
I've been a big Borderlands fan for 10+ years. I played through the first one multiple times and loved it. My wife and I bonded over BL1 when we first started dating.
Was super excited for BL2, and have played it many times throughout the years.
But the pre-sequel was a let down, and BL3 felt soulless and lacked the same spark as BL2.
Tiny Tina Wonderlands was great, and felt like a return to what made BL2 so fun.
All that to say, I don't have high hopes for BL4, nor will I be paying $80 for it. It just feels like they're coasting off the brand name at this point and trying to exploit longtime BL players like myself.
What's your take on the telltale game?
Not OP but Tales from the Borderlands 1 us my favorite of the telltale game collection and has some of my favorite music videos ever and wears its emotions on its sleeve for you to empathize with its characters in clever real ways.
I never played the Tales from Borderlands myself, but my wife did and she really enjoyed it. She said it added a lot to the story lore presented in BL2.
I did enjoy the Walking Dead telltale game along with the Wolf Among Us, though.
Like waiting 6 months for them to panic over low sales and put on 50% sale?
Maybe, or maybe I'll wait for the ultimate edition with all dlc to hit $40
When $40 is half price, I will generally pass as if it were $80. There is a glut of amazing content out there for $40 or less, and much of it is truly inspired indie work. When your half-price game is competing with great full-price indie titles, I will continue to ignore your overpriced corporate muck.
I mean 50% off and still being $40 still sounds like a terrible deal
Right? I didn’t realize how disinterested I was in Borderlands until I read that.
Borderlands 3 is in a free giveaway after a year or so on Epic Games. The sales must be abysmal to give a flagship franchise away for free, because of Randy being a bitch and insist exclusive is good. This will hopefully bite them back like last time.
I honestly think it will sell a lot because most gamers won't be able to control themselves.
What does a 12 year old care about $80? They ain't spending that. Their parents are.
Or perhaps even find it to be worth the price.
Or get it second-hand off G2A or CDKeys.
I'm never paying $80 for a video game.
piracy is preferable over buying a key off of greymarket sites like this tbh
I wouldn't advise using those services, myself. Lots of sketchy stuff. Legit copies of digital games go on sale often enough.
I got Borderlands 3 about a year after release for less than 5€, I can wait.
You'd think he'd be better media trained by now. But no, here goes the foot in the mouth.
He got the horrible Hand, Foot in Mouth Disease.
Nothing has stopped him so far, including assaulting the VA of their most well known character
Too much games to play on the market to justify the urgency to buy it at release for 80 bucks. they now compete with free to play, gamepass, Indy games, piracy, and tons of past games with lower cost.
The fomo of newly released games is low when most games are released in shitty state and need 1/2 months of patches/fixes and that's not even taking in consideration that the best experience is when all the dlcs are released and make the game finally complete.
The AAA industry is fucked. In a world where quality games are released each weeks they are often but even the best way to have fun with our limited time, like tepid Ubisoft games...
Yeah I'm really starting to feel like we're gonna see a lot of these companies shift from doing big AAA games to instead publishing small indie games. Almost all of these big companies have indie publishing arms now and as they start to see good profits from those without having to take on the cost of paying devs themselves I wouldn't be surprised if they start cutting back on their own dev teams and shifting to that.
Honestly I am all for if it means that we get original games again from big studios, I can't get hyped anymore for yet another sequel or remaster.
Honestly, in my opinion, there's too many games to justify buying it at all. I enjoyed one and two when I was a kid, and there wasn't competition for the genre. Three I think was free on Epic or something, so I played and it was fine, but not great. I don't expect much from four, and there's companies I'd actually like to support instead.
I can't tell you exactly why, but as much as I played and replayed borderlands 1&2, the third one didn't interest me at all, I can see that the recipe used the same ingredients but it just didn't taste the same to contribute the metaphor. It just bored me and my wife during our coop campaign, and we didn't have any desire to continue our playthrough. I hope they get it back with four but I don't trust them enough anymore to buy it blindly anyway.
Hi Randy, fuck off lol
Yeah, Randy, I find a way to make it happen, it's called Xbox sale. That’s how I bought Borderlands 3. Which I haven't played yet. And don't get me wrong, Randy, Borderlands 2 is one of the most fun games I've played, I'm definitely a real fan! I'm definitely a video game enthusiast, I have a ginormous backlog on both Xbox and Steam.
I can make it happen? Okeydokey! 🏴☠️
Yeah, I'll fucking pirate it LMAO
Guess I'm not a real fan 🤷♂️
I'm absolutely ready to pay 80$ for a game. But then I don't want to see scummy shit like lootboxes or advanced access in it. If I pay 80$ I expect to see a game release that isn't half-baked and has to get fixed with hotfixes and patches over the next two months but that just works out of the box and that doesn't try to get me to spend even more money on it. That also includes no content that they've already produced being held back for DLCs.
This has always been my counterpoint for the Nintendo haters when they complain about price. (Although they are a shit company in several other ways) Because when my daughter wants a new switch game if its a top tier Nintendo title its going to be a finished game with zero bugs and zero concern about problematic content for me.
Exactly. That's why I buy Nintendo games near release and am patient for PC games.
I found a way already, it's called patience. Works well for basically any non nintendo game.
You can still (for the moment) be patient with Nintendo games if you're OK buying second hand
I solved that by moving to pc and forgetting about Nintendo's existence.
Or just pirate and emulate Nintendo games. They're such scumbags that they make piracy morally correct
I won't be buying any game that costs $80 not when I have a mountain of games in my Steam Library, many of which are getting played thanks to the Steam Deck and if that's not enough I have Game Pass too so why the hell would I even consider paying $80
Yeah, the way to make it happen is adding it to my wishlist and waiting for the price to drop to at least $40.
I've found a way to play every Borderlands game, 2 is my fave, and not pay more than 12 usd, for the 3rd one which I didn't even get halfway through 'cause it's boring AF - I love Steam sales and don't have FOMO
Real fans "Find a Way" Yarr.
Nope, just would play Tiny Tina's Wonderland again honestly, which I got for around $10 when it was heavily on sale a year ago.
Borderlands isn't that good, Randy. Is anyone that much of a fan of a genetic shooter who's only distinguishing feature was the art style and the number of guns? (which I found got tiresome pretty quickly.) I played and enjoyed the first one, but from what I've played of 2 and the Pre-sequel, it was just more of the same so I haven't bothered since.
I got bored with Borderlands 3 in one hour. Copy pasta gameplay and I’m tired of the art style and humor. I only paid a fiver but I wish I had bought a burger instead.
I thought Borderlands was lots of fun, but not four games (for now) and a movie (for now) worth of fun. Even two games was pushing it a bit. You can only stretch things out so much.
