Borderlands 4 debuts with strong sales as patches roll out

Borderlands 4 launched to strong sales but a wave of technical problems across PC and consoles has overshadowed parts of the debut, prompting rapid patches from developer Gearbox Entertainment and a mix of community workarounds while the studio vows further fixes. The looter shooter arrived on September 12 for PC, PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S, with a Nintendo Switch 2 release scheduled for October, and has already sold more than two million copies, generating roughly $150 million, according to market analysts.

Players and technical analysts reported two broad classes of problems. On consoles users described progressive frame rate degradation during long sessions, sometimes within 30 minutes to an hour, that could be temporarily resolved only by quitting the game and restarting, a behavior Digital Foundry documented in a technical analysis. That outlet recorded instances in which performance fell to as low as 35 frames per second in low-resolution modes after prolonged play. Many players and some commentators have suggested the symptoms are consistent with a memory leak, particularly on PS5 Pro, though the underlying cause has not been independently verified.