Gearbox CEO Randy Pitchford has caught heat after responding to criticism about Borderlands 4‘s PC performance issues with a blunt message. When players complained about stuttering and crashes, Pitchford posted on social media: “code your own engine and show us how it’s done please.”
The comment came as Borderlands 4‘s Steam rating dropped to Mixed following widespread reports of technical problems. Players have been dealing with constant stuttering, frame pacing issues, and multiplayer crashes since the game launched. Many users say they need aggressive upscaling just to get playable framerates on mid-range graphics cards.
What makes Pitchford’s response particularly odd is that Borderlands 4 runs on Unreal Engine 5. Epic Games built this engine, not Gearbox. The studio is essentially telling players to build something they didn’t build themselves.
Players quickly pointed out the absurdity. “You don’t need to know how to pilot a helicopter to point out it shouldn’t be upside down in a tree,” one frustrated customer wrote. Another added: “It’s not my job to code a game engine. I paid you for the product and you built a shitty one.”
The performance problems plaguing Borderlands 4 are actually common with Unreal Engine 5 games at launch. The engine’s advanced features like Lumen global illumination and Nanite geometry often cause shader compilation stutters and traversal hitches. Many UE5 titles struggle on PC until developers implement proper shader pre-caching and optimization passes.
Borderlands 4 moved to Unreal Engine 5 from the Unreal Engine 4 used in Borderlands 3. The franchise is Gearbox’s biggest property, known for its cel-shaded graphics and co-op looter shooter gameplay. With standard AAA pricing at $70, players expected better performance out of the box.
Engine troubles are nothing new
Some improvements have arrived through patches. A weekend update reportedly fixed issues for certain players, though many still report problems on RTX 3060 and 4060-class GPUs without heavy reliance on DLSS or FSR upscaling. Multiplayer remains particularly unstable compared to single-player modes.
The whole situation could have been avoided with a simple “we hear you and we’re working on it” response. Instead, Pitchford’s combative tone has become the story, overshadowing any actual progress on fixing the game’s technical issues.
