Borderlands 4‘s PC performance has significantly improved since its launch in Fall 2025, and now Gearbox has explained exactly how it got here. Expectations were mixed leading up to the game’s release, thanks to multiple controversies around its potential price point, recommended specs, and comments from CEO Randy Pitchford. Six months later, Borderlands 4 is in a different place than when it came out, and that’s for the best for PC players.
Despite a largely successful debut, Gearbox’s looter shooter quickly lost its footing. It took roughly two months for Borderlands 4 to lose 96% of its player count, even though critic reviews were largely positive. Steam users, however, felt differently, and the title fell to a “Mixed” rating on the platform. Many of the most persistent complaints revolved around the game’s performance, with PC users often citing FPS drops, stuttering, and crashes, even when playing on high-end systems. Thankfully, Gearbox devs have since addressed these concerns.
Gearbox Says Borderlands 4’s Average FPS Has Improved by 20%
In a recent post on the official Borderlands 4 blog, Gearbox detailed the PC optimizations the game has received up to this point. PC performance has been a thorn in the game’s side, with previous Borderlands 4 updates promising improvements, but some players finding they did the opposite. Over time, though, things did get better, with Gearbox now claiming average FPS has jumped by roughly 20% between Version 1.0.2 and the current build, Version 1.5. At the game’s minimum specs, average framerates have climbed from 37.32 to 52.79 FPS, while on an RTX 4090, they went from 54.96 FPS to 78.43 FPS, without being “too noticeable in terms of visual fidelity,” according to Gearbox.
The post also detailed a bevy of other fixes. Gearbox says stutters have reduced, with lower framerates now falling closer to the average, and game crashes falling to just 0.38% of all sessions, which is half of what it was in December. The post commented on Borderlands 4‘s billions of guns, too, explaining how spawning so many unique elements can be tough on rendering. Gearbox devs now claim the game enables graphics drivers to detect new materials earlier, helping them prepare to render them when the time comes to let players enjoy the variety without their performance dropping as a result. Beyond that, some lighting and physics tweaks have reportedly reduced Borderlands 4‘s GPU and CPU strain when rendering visual effects.
Gearbox ended the post by admitting there is still more work to be done and promising further optimizations down the road. The studio had previously confirmed that Borderlands 4 will get weekly patches and monthly updates throughout 2026, so presumably, PC performance will continue to improve, barring any unforeseen issues with additional content. If nothing else, it’s good to see that devs have taken the game’s need for PC optimizations seriously and have made real progress on the matter. It’s unclear if these upgrades will have any effect on player counts or how people feel about the game in the future, but they’re a needed step, nonetheless.
Who’s That Character?
Identify the silhouettes before time runs out.
Identify the silhouettes before time runs out.
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While things are looking up for the looter shooter on PC, the same can’t be said for all platforms. After an indefinite delay, Gearbox has paused work on Borderlands 4‘s Switch 2 version, leaving it with an uncertain future. The port is not outright canceled, but there’s no telling how long it will be before Nintendo fans can try the game out on their console of choice. The pause should divert more time and resources to PC, PS5, and Xbox versions of Borderlands 4, so it could be good news for those who already own a copy, but Switch 2 owners will have to wait a while longer.
- Released
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September 12, 2025
- ESRB
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Mature 17+ / Blood and Gore, Intense Violence, Sexual Themes, Strong Language, In-Game Purchases, Users Interact
Source: 2K
