Borderlands 4 developers are talking about the experience of working on the game six months post-launch, and have admitted that it’s been “a little stressful.” A good portion of the reason for the stress is due to the lingering issues that Borderlands 4 has had on PCs.
Borderlands 4 originally launched back in September 2025, but the game has never been fully stagnant, with the development teams releasing patches and new content. The latest of these is the Borderlands 4 DLC Mad Ellie and the Vault of the Damned, which adds a new story, a new Vault Hunter, and an increase to the level cap from 50 to 60. However, none of that means much if the game has performance problems for a portion of the playerbase, which means that the team has also been working hard on ironing out issues.
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Borderlands 4 Team Discusses Development Stress
In a chat between IGN and members of the Borderlands 4 team, managing producer Eli Luna admitted that the team has been going through some stress in order to get everything done. Specifically, Luna pointed out that “nothing is done on an assembly line” and that the team has had to balance introducing new content while simultaneously smoothing out the game’s performance. According to Luna, everyone on the team works simultaneously, which means that balancing all the moving parts can be challenging. They added that they think the team has done a “pretty good job of taking the feedback” and working on addressing it as well as they can.
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Luna also notes the improvements the game has seen, especially with the most recent Borderlands 4 patch. In all, they note a 20% increase in FPS “on just our rec spec,” but the team isn’t done yet. They note there’s plenty of work yet to be done that they will be working on for the remainder of the year alongside the new content that’s coming out. In all, though, they seem to be taking it in stride, noting that it’s “part of the challenge of game development” and that while it’s been a lot, it’s also been fun.
The developer also added that part of the issues the game faced at launch were due to it being a large, seamless world, and a four-player co-op game on top of that. Implementing traditional zones might have helped the game to perform better, but the large scope of Borderlands 4 is part of its appeal at the same time. The team is still taking the performance into consideration moving forward with new content, and is making an effort not to abandon players utilizing PCs that meet the minimum system requirements or those at the recommended level. However, they also don’t want to wait too long to put out content, stating that they don’t want to “hold the entire thing back just because of certain aspects.”
From the sound of it, even after improving the base performance on gaming PCs, the team still has quite a bit of work ahead to ensure that the game remains in a solid playable state when new features are added. It’s likely refreshing and reassuring for PC gamers to hear the effort that’s being put in, especially after initial complaints in the form of negative reviews were largely brushed off at Borderlands 4‘s launch by Randy Pitchford, who suggested that a lack of official customer support requests indicated that the complaints were overblown.
The most recent update for Borderlands 4 has made considerable improvements to the performance of the game, with Gearbox stating that there are fewer stutters, a higher average frame rate, and game crashes have fallen to half of what they were at the end of 2025. Weekly patches and monthly updates for Borderlands 4 will continue to land for the remainder of 2026, which may help to further improve upon the experience for those who had problems with the game at launch.
- 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