Borderlands 4 Sets Record, But PC Players Are Struggling To Play

Borderlands 4 is out now on PC through Steam and the Epic Retailer. And the looter shooter sequel is already the most important Borderlands launch on Steam, with over 200,000 concurrent gamers only a few hours after its launch. However opinions on Steam aren’t nice, as many gamers are struggling to even play the co-op FPS.

On September 11, Borderlands 4 launched on PC. The long-awaited sequel to Gearbox’s Borderlands 3 is an even bigger, higher, and wilder expertise than the earlier sport, that includes a number of good modifications and additions to the basic looting-shooting formulation. Nevertheless, that’s solely the case should you can really play the sport and luxuriate in it. And on PC, gamers are reporting plenty of efficiency points, even on {hardware} that Gearbox listed as assembly the wanted specs.

As of 4:30 pm EST on Steam, Borderlands 4 has about 2,000 opinions which are completely divided between damaging and optimistic, giving the sport a 50 p.c combined standing. That’s no good! Scrolling by opinions, the most important complaints appear to be not concerning the content material of the sport, however about how poorly it performs on numerous {hardware} setups. Gamers are additionally complaining about stuttering and hitching, or being pressured to make use of DLSS to play the sport at a steady framerate. Others can’t even boot the sport up, reporting crashes earlier than they even get into the motion.

In fact, there are additionally loads of opinions from folks saying that they had no points in any respect and claiming that folks complaining have to improve their PCs. That is the web, so after all it devolved right into a struggle with numerous sides and factions.

Within the opinions on Steam, the most well-liked culprits persons are blaming for the dangerous efficiency embrace Unreal Engine 5 and DRM safety software program Denuvo. During the last 12 months or so, Unreal Engine 5 has develop into a goal on-line as gamers consider the engine isn’t well-suited to large video games and is tough to optimize. The complaints have gotten so loud on-line that Epic CEO Tim Sweeney even stepped in just lately to defend the engine and lay the blame on devs who aren’t centered on optimization early sufficient within the cycle.

My expertise enjoying Borderlands 4 on PC

I’ve been enjoying Borderlands 4 on PC for the final week, and my expertise has been up and down. Once I first received the sport, I used to be enjoying on an RTX 3070 and struggled to run it at 1080p at 60FPS. I upgraded my rig to an RTX 5070 (one thing I had been planning on doing for a number of months now), and Borderlands 4 ran a lot better. Nevertheless, I nonetheless discovered that I wanted to run the sport with DLSS on and body gen to achieve 120 FPS at 1080 with some settings kicked all the way down to medium.  Contemplating the specs within the machine, I used to be shocked by how energy hungry the sport is, and I’ll admit that I proceed to be disillusioned with Unreal Engine 5 video games.

That stated, ever since I discovered some settings that labored and downloaded the newest drivers, which weren’t obtainable after I first received entry to the sport, I’ve been having a good time enjoying the sport on PC. It largely locks to 120 with my present settings and setup, and it feels nice. I must also level out, although, that there’s been some chatter indicating that the day-one patch for the sport, which arrived shortly earlier than launch, might have brought about issues that weren’t current when critics and content material creators have been enjoying it pre-release. In my fast exams, I’ve discovered the newest patch, the one persons are enjoying with on Steam proper now, appears to carry with it some points that weren’t current earlier than the day-one patch. However I have to play extra to essentially see if issues are damaged.

I hope Gearbox points a patch on PC quickly to assist enhance issues a bit. Or on the very least, do away with Denuvo ASAP.