After yet another week of controversial comments from Gearbox Software CEO Randy Pitchford regarding Borderlands 4‘s performance on PC, I have to admit it’s very refreshing to see a new game launch with optimization that completely undermines those comments.
In case you missed it, Pitchford essentially blamed PC gamers for their performance complaints, commenting that players were being “too 4K stubborn” and saying that “premium games are made for premium gamers”. Or, perhaps the most damning of all, suggesting players “code your own game and show us how it’s done”.
Simply put, those comments are completely out of order. Borderlands 4 clearly has optimization issues, not only on PCs (I mean, literally including the best gaming PCs), but also on consoles. Players discovered that the longer the game is played, the worse the performance gets, and that is very much a telltale sign of bad optimization.
Not only are the comments unfair, but they remove any form of accountability from Pitchford, who should be taking full responsibility. If your game isn’t optimized or ready to launch, then don’t release it.
In comes Techland’s Dying Light: The Beast, which sees the return of a beloved character, Kyle Crane, but most importantly, a game that is clearly very well optimized on both PC and console.
I’ve played about 4.5 hours of this game already, and have seen nothing but smooth performance on an RTX 4080 Super, and the same on my Lenovo Legion Go S Z1 Extreme (if you want to see more about the game’s content, check out my teammate Christian Guyton’s Dying Light: The Beast review).
It’s a game that shows us that good PC optimization is very much possible. While that factor may come down to the engines and in-game tech (such as ray-tracing) used, it puts Pitchford’s fan retaliation to bed entirely, particularly for those on low-end hardware.
Dying Light: The Beast is a much better looking game than Borderlands 4, and still runs better
When you have titles like CD Projekt Red’s Cyberpunk 2077 with incredible visuals even when ray tracing is enabled, there comes a point where there’s very little excuse for a cell-shaded game like Borderlands 4 to run the way it does – but we’re not even talking Cyberpunk 2077 comparisons here.
Dying Light: The Beast is another incredible game with immersive visuals, and it runs significantly better than Borderlands 4 at a native 4K resolution. On an RTX 5090 (in a YouTube video from zWORMz Gaming), with the maximum graphics preset, it maintains a steady frame rate just above 95fps, alongside a very stable frame time, which means no stutters.
Mind you, Dying Light: The Beast doesn’t have ray-tracing implemented just yet, but it doesn’t need it with how good it looks. It’s an example of Techland not relying on DLSS upscaling and Frame Generation for good performance, but instead, ensuring that the game is running at an acceptable standard for all players on different hardware.
Perhaps Borderlands 4‘s performance issues do come down to Unreal Engine 5. We’ve seen an alarming number of games that use this engine suffering from similar stuttering issues. But that’s not always the case, as Black Myth Wukong suffers from stutters, but it’s not significant enough to ruin the gameplay experience on most PC configurations (I can’t say the same about console, though).
Regardless of that matter, it’s quite clear that Techland was hard at work with its latest Dying Light entry, and we didn’t have seniors at the studio hitting back at fans for complaints about a product they spent hard-earned money on.
It’s very pleasing to see, and I’m hoping this starts a trend of other games following in the same footsteps, regardless of their engines.
It’s not gamers’ responsibility to get games running at an acceptable standard
When we, as gamers, buy a brand new title we’re looking forward to, the last thing we want to hear is that complaints about performance are unreasonable, or that we should attempt game optimization ourselves.
It’s not our job to ensure that games come out without major optimization issues, especially considering the consistent push for $80 game prices (Pitchford was behind this controversy too, stating that, “if you’re a real fan, you’ll find a way to make [paying $80] happen”).
I hate to sound like a broken record, but if a game cannot run at very high frame rates with smooth frame times on an RTX 5090, then we have a problem – and that’s why Pitchford’s comments left fans infuriated.
I take my hat off to game developers like Techland and others like Shift Up (with Stellar Blade), who launch games on day one with little to no issues, because it’s something we unfortunately don’t see as often with modern PC games.
The plea is quite simple: developers, release your games when they are ready and well optimized, because fans will appreciate it, and definitely do not do what Pitchford has done – because frankly, if none of those tweets were released, I’m willing to bet that Borderlands 4 would have had a much better reception than it currently does.
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