"Use DLSS" says Gearbox boss after facing Borderlands 4 performance backlash

Gearbox's Borderlands 4 saw a gigantic launch on PC last week, but as evident by its user review scores on Steam, performance has been a major sour point amongst PC gamers. The title currently stands with a 67% 'Mixed' rating, with most of the negative reviews calling it an unoptimized, messy experience even when using cutting-edge hardware.

Over the weekend, Gearbox Software CEO Randy Pitchford made several comments about this performance backlash, and most of it involved him calling out complainers, saying that "the game is pretty damn optimal."

"Every PC gamer must accept the reality of the relationship between their hardware and what the software they are running is doing," said Pitchford in his latest string of social media posts. "For a campaign shooter looter, it is absolutely reasonable for developers to focus on default settings achieving 30fps on minimum specification and 60fps on recommended specification."

The CEO asked players to either lower graphics to get more performance or simply enjoy the eye candy, saying the title has the tools to make those tradeoffs happen. "There are a few real issues, but they are affecting a very, very small percentage of users," he said.

Per Pitchford's customer service reports data for Borderlands 4, about 0.04% of PC customers have been sending complaints about performance issues to the company, and only 0.009% had been deemed as valid reports. "This reality is dramatically different than what you would expect if your only sources of information were, say, certain internet threads," explained the Gearbox CEO.

"Use DLSS. It’s great," adds Pitchford. "The game was built to take advantage of it. This is not a competitive FPS. And, I have been led to believe that in a blind test that humans cannot detect any input lag. In my own demonstrates and experiments, I believe this is true."

Earlier, a user had also asked Pitchford to make the game look good "without relying on AI upscale," and to that, he replied, "Code your own engine and show us how it’s done, please."

As expected, the fan reactions to these social media posts haven't been very positive. The CEO went on to confirm that the development team is still doing "significant work" on improving PC performance and thanked the community for its passion surrounding the game.

Borderlands 4 is now available across PC (Steam and Epic Games Store), Xbox Series X|S, and PlayStation 5 with a $69.99 price tag for the standard edition, with $99.99 and $129.99 versions also available.