Gearbox boss Randy Pitchford has released a poll asking players about their feelings on making games like Borderlands 4 exclusive to storefronts like Epic Games Store. Steam has been the dominant PC storefront for many, many years as it was one of the first places you could buy digital games on your PC. It was a very simplified, streamlined experienced that has only improved over time with achievements, friends lists, and of course, the glorious Steam Deck. It’s generally the preferred place to play if you play on PC, but competitors have popped up over the years such as Epic Games Store which has competed with incredible free games and exclusive titles.
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Great games like Alan Wake 2 have been locked to Epic Games Store on PC, as Epic helped publish the game. One could argue the game wouldn’t exist at all without Epic, but it has still frustrated players who don’t want to play on Epic Games Store. There are a lot of reasons why people don’t like EGS, namely because it uses way more system resources than it needs, criticism over Epic money hatting certain games, and lackluster customer service. Of course, it’s all subjective and some people really love the storefront as well.
Borderlands 4 Boss Holds Poll Asking About Steam and Epic Games Store Exclusivity
With that said, Gearbox Software boss Randy Pitchford has revealed that “suits” either at Gearbox or parent company Take-Two Interactive are discussing the idea of exclusives between Epic Games Store and Steam. He asked fans to vote on a poll on if they pre-order Borderlands 4 on their favorite platform if they knew it would influence exclusivity decisions. To be clear, Borderlands 4 is releasing on both Steam and Epic Games Store, so there’s nothing to worry about there. However, these discussions will likely impact future games and it seems like these executives are going to look at sales/pre-order data to make these kinds of decisions.
53% of the nearly 10,000 people who voted stated they would pre-order it on Steam with this knowledge while 37.8.% said no, they would not pre-order it on Steam. The numbers for Epic users were much, much smaller with 2.7% saying yes and 5.6% saying no. Ultimately, it seems like Steam users aren’t too bothered by the idea that games may become exclusive to Steam, but there was still a vocal minority that voted against such a notion.
Ultimately, it’s likely that the bulk of Borderlands 4‘s PC sales will probably be on Steam given it’s the dominant platform. As of right now, we’ll just have to wait and see what happens, but Borderlands 4 is expected to be one of the biggest releases of the year. It makes sense that executives are taking note of its performance across platforms to make these kinds of decisions.
Borderlands 3 was a timed exclusive for Epic Games Store for the first six months of its release on PC. Epic paid just shy of $150 million for this deal, but recouped its money in the end. It was a pretty lucrative deal and shows that gamers will flock to other platforms to play games if it’s a big enough deal. Borderlands 4‘s collector’s edition is also exclusive to GameStop, so there are some exclusivity deals being made, but far less meaningful ones by comparison. Whether or not future Borderlands or Gearbox games are exclusive like this remain to be seen.
Borderlands 4 will release on Xbox, PS5, PC, and even Nintendo Switch 2 on September 12th.
