Gearbox CEO Hints Borderlands 4 Discounts a Long Time Coming

[Grimling]

Take-Two and 2K games getting slammed right now on steam for this:
They have updated all their games Terms of Service, turning this game (Borderlands 3) as well as all of their other games into literal spyware.

Important Info in Terms of Service:
• Mods are a bannable offense
• Display of Cheats/Exploits is bannable
• Forced arbitration clause and a waiver of class action and jury trial rights for all users residing in the United States and any other territory other than Australia, Switzerland, The United Kingdom, or The Territories of The European Economic Area
• You can be banned for using a VPN while connecting to online servers
• Cannot access game content on a Virtual PC

Collected Data Types:
• Identifiers / Contact Information: Name, user name, gamertag, postal and email address, phone number, unique IDs, mobile device ID, platform ID, gaming service ID, advertising ID (IDFA, Android ID) and IP address
• Protected Characteristics: Age and gender
• Commercial Information: Purchase and usage history and preferences, including gameplay information
• Billing Information: Payment information (credit / debit card information) and shipping address
• Internet / Electronic Activity: Web / app browsing and gameplay information related to the Services; information about your online interaction(s) with the Services or our advertising; and details about the games and platforms you use and other information related to installed applications
• Device and Usage Data: Device type, software and hardware details, language settings, browser type and version, operating system, and information about how users use and interact with the Services (e.g., content viewed, pages visited, clicks, scrolls)
• Profile Inferences: Inferences made from your information and web activity to help create a personalized profile so we can identify goods and services that may be of interest
• Audio / Visual Information: Account photos, images, and avatars, audio information via chat features and functionality, and gameplay recordings and video footage (such as when you participate in playtesting)
• Sensitive Information: Precise location information (if you allow the Services to collect your location), account credentials (user name and password), and contents of communications via chat features and functionality.

 

[TheDeeGee]

Borderlands... don't know her.

 

[Dragokar]

I am amazed how Borderlands UI/UIx gets worse from title to title....I only saw BL4 on pictures, but it looked cluttered af to me. Also, I am not paying the called price for the DLC festival.

 

[Legacy-ZA]

so 80$ for the first Act to get started, then the rest of the game will release as DLCs for another 300$?

Yeah, even if the base game is discounted that much, more than half the game was cut out and released as DLC, no point in getting the base platform without the rest.

Somehow, they also never make exceptions for poorer regions, so it's doubly worse. I just don't purchase games like that, but if they ever do release them in an "ultimate" version with a good discount, I will snag them up.

 

[Merluz]

I've played for free Borderlands 3, don't really know why he thinks that a brutally stupid FOMO technique will make some difference on the game sell rate.
FOMO of what btw, it's a single player game with coop, you can play today Boderlands 1 without missing anything after 10+ years.

 

[evernessince]

I hold 0 admiration for the tactic (or the person in-question) but, I'm 99% sure Pitchford is all-in on 'ragebait marketing'. Basically, "any publicity is good publicity" of old, mixed with "rage drives engagement" of today. Add-in a little controlled opposition, and you've got AAA Marketing that self-propagates (read: viral) while keeping attention away from more-legitimate criticisms.
For example: Does anyone even know/care about the gameplay or story of Bl4, right now? All the discussion and controversy is seemingly centered around pricing and Pitchford's commentary

After trying Bl3, I wasn't at all interested in a Bl4. But, because of the artificial controversy, I'm regularly reminded of 4's existence.

From what I've seen it looks extremely similar to BL3 gameplay wise and that's considering that these first looks are from hand selected influencer by gearbox. If you weren't into 3 it's very likely you won't like 4.

We've already seen the conversation about the story, the talking point now is "the story doesn't matter gameplay actually matters" which signals to me that the story sucks rocks.

Rage engagement hasn't been working very well the last half decade. People are sick of it.

Yeah, I'd call it over-engagement. This overuse of social media and influencers to manipulate perception and drive engagement is beyond annoying. I don't blame people for disengaging with an increasingly fake internet.

The adage "vote with your wallet" does work, but only if enough people do it.

I avoid purchasing any game on Steam/EA/Ubisoft/EGS and I don't give my money to third parties that provide keys to these platforms either (such as Humble Bundle, Fanatical and so on). If a game I want isn't coming out on GoG (a place I can actually have control over how I use the game; download the files to my side for storage, install the files when I want without needing to even be online or need some form of DRM and install them where I want) then I won't pay money towards it.

I'd love to have games come back to a physical medium, but even then that can bring issues of DRM into play with software such as SecuRom or still requiring a link to a digital platform such as Steam. This is why I feel GoG is leaps and bounds better over physical media and why I only support GoG.

To each their own, but you can't complain about the issues of not owning your games if you're part of the problem. Sadly, most people are okay with giving up owning products for the small convenience of having access to things from anywhere they are.

Like movies/shows that stay on streaming services and no longer are sold on DVD/Blu-ray. I don't want to be forced to paying a continuous fee to a rental company (streaming service) to access shows/movies I like. I end up finding places to buy pirated shows from on disc so I have them when I want to use them. I can play them on my dvd players and copy them to my server to view when I want to from where I want to. I'd much rather have my money go to the studios that created the content, but if they're not willing to sell them on disc, then I guess some other third party will get money for it.

As for Borderlands 4, I won't waste my money on it. The original was fun and the second one was pretty good, but the pre-sequal and third one sucked so I'm not about to let my brother (who will one day want to buy us copies on Steam) waste his money on a crappy franchise. There are better games out there worthy of his and my money, Borderlands 4 isn't one of them.

GoG is great IMO. It lets me keep the installers for archival purposes while having the GoG client update my games automatically. Best of both worlds. If GOG ever goes down I have the installers and even all the GOG games from the client can still be launched without issue.

 

[Vayra86]

Crazy if he thinks this game or any game for that matter is worth 80$, will wait for the 25$ discount.

Right?

People keep defending this idea that games 'because they are more expensive to make' are justified costing ever more money.
Does anyone ever ask the question what the actual budget of said games is divided into?

Here's a news flash...

List of most expensive video games to develop - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Sort this interesting list on 'Marketing' highest on top and you will be getting a pretty neat view on the actual cost of games development.
Even the supposed 'community supported' Cyberpunk 2077 appears in the list on the very top. CDPR, caring for gamers. Yet 25% of your purchase price went into marketing, not game. And it shows. Let's be real here. Now, the same Cyberpunk also invested over 500M into 'development'... honestly what the fuck!? 500M into a game and this is what they ended up with? Sheet. The better half of what they envisioned in trailers hasn't been delivered to date. But okay, I'm sure hiring a few Hollywood actors was mighty expensive. Do I game more for it though?

I am right now playing Tainted Grail Fall of Avalon, a supposed B-class game... and I honestly can't tell why or what makes that top 5 up here so special in comparison. I can name a few dozen other indie games that have achieved more 'game' and even graphically don't have anything to excuse themselves for.... that cost half or a third of what Cyberpunk 2077 costs and are more fun to play, more hours to invest, and have higher replay value. We could take any other title from the top 5 here and apply the same principle. What. The. Fuck. Are we doing with gaming people? Who's fooling who here?

Just to put this in perspective... this, here, we still consider a game with actual, engaging gameplay:
Budget?

 

[razaron]

I hold 0 admiration for the tactic (or the person in-question) but, I'm 99% sure Pitchford is all-in on 'ragebait marketing'. Basically, "any publicity is good publicity" of old, mixed with "rage drives engagement" of today. Add-in a little controlled opposition, and you've got AAA Marketing that self-propagates (read: viral) while keeping attention away from more-legitimate criticisms.
For example: Does anyone even know/care about the gameplay or story of Bl4, right now? All the discussion and controversy is seemingly centered around pricing and Pitchford's commentary

After trying Bl3, I wasn't at all interested in a Bl4. But, because of the artificial controversy, I'm regularly reminded of 4's existence.

The only things I've seen about BL4 are TPU articles and a video from ZiggyD. Depends on your recommendation algorithm. Not using social media also helps.

Day 1 purchase if it isn't buggy, broken and poorly optimised. Which is unlikely tbf, it's a videogame in the 21st century.

 

[lilhasselhoffer]

Help me to understand here.

Borderlands has been functionally the same gatcha-RNG based gun looter shooter for years. The "endgame" is always to reroll the final boss to get potentially the best gun, which is a dice roll in a few categories. Each character is a basic archetype with some personality...and the point of the game has always been the nebulous vault and final boss combo.

Gearbox authorized a movie that...they put their seal of approval on. One which had about the same quality control as the Postal movie...which is to say none.

We then hear from their head grease producer, that is so greasy that he could unlock a transmission rusted solid for years, that the price of the game should be $80...until the community strikes down that stupidity knowing the base game is going to be a barebones experience which requires purchase of the DLCs to actually unlock everything...and his predictable response is that he's not going to discount the thing for a long time. I...cannot fathom a universe in which my response is to ignore the grease demon and let him continue to be a pox on an industry that doesn't understand just how insanely close they are to collapse...because the big bosses cannot fathom why everyone shouldn't be charging $80 and putting out a 60-70% experience, and how even the casual consumers are starting to awaken to the fact that they own nothing and can have everything taken away from them...because an $80 license is literally nothing when your game requires a server that can be taken down at any moment, rendering your software useless. Yeah this spiraled a bit, but the pox of Gearbox is less a unique tumor to excise and more a bellweather for everything wrong in the industry condensed into a single person who is impossible to not hate, yet remains the PR person because the videogames industry is riding as high as the music industry prior to its collapse into ringtone rap.