Gearbox Software president Randy Pitchford recently caught the ire of players regarding the potential price of Borderlands 4 when he told one person on X that a “real fan” would find a way to pay $80 for the upcoming game if that ended up being the price.
This all started during PAX East, when Pitchford was asked what the price of Borderlands 4 would be while Gearbox was presenting on the main stage. Pitchford’s answer boiled down to “I don’t know,” and gave a long speech about why he didn’t know and couldn’t give an exact answer about the price, how it’s not his decision what the price ends up being, and the many variables that go into pricing a video game.
If he hadn’t taken it further than his speech at PAX East, the story of Borderlands 4’s pricing would have stopped there, and it wouldn’t have come up again until the game’s price was officially revealed. But, in response to a player telling Pitchford that, “alot of gamers aren’t gonna pay 80 dollars and feed this notion of constant increase of the price tag,” he responded in a way that many deemed to be condescending, using an example of how when he was a kid, he put in the extra work at his minimum wage ice cream shop job to pay for a game he was looking forward to.
He’s recently apologized for that response, but not in a way where he necessarily takes ownership for what he said. Instead, Pitchford apologized for the “misunderstanding” of his comments.
“I am sorry there was a misunderstanding. The absolute sincere truth is that I don’t want anyone to pay any more than they should or are comfortable with and I always work with the intent and hope that a customer always feels they got the better end of the deal no matter what they pay,” is how he began what is a very long post on X.
Pitchford went on to explain that he believes he “triggered some people” when he used the phrase “real fans,” and that he was in no way making “some big statement,” or that he “was taking the audience for granted.”
A quick scroll through the replies to his apology makes it clear that it did not land with fans the way Pitchford might’ve hoped. He tries to sound sincere, but as the first reply makes clear, he loses players right from the top, by apologizing for the misunderstanding, instead of just apologizing for what he said, and moving on to his “sincere truth” that he wants anyone who buys his games that they feel like they got the better deal “no matter what they pay.”
Video game pricing is currently a sore spot for players, with Mario Kart World officially kicking up the new potential standard to $80, and the fear that every new, current-generation game will be priced at that new threshold. It’s already believed that Take-Two will (at the very least) match Mario Kart World’s pricing when they release Grand Theft Auto VI next May.
$70 became the standard only a few short years ago, following the launch of the current-gen consoles. The rest of the industry quickly jumping to $80 is something that players are fearful of, especially when the price of actual life essentials (food, shelter) is going up around the world.
When Borderlands 3 came out in 2019, it did so at the then-standard $60 price. It’s unlikely that Borderlands 4 will come in at anything less than $70, but it’ll be interesting to see how players vote with their wallets when it comes to the seemingly inevitable wave of $80 games.
