Gearbox Software’s Creative Director, Graeme Timmins, has taken to social media to address growing community concerns around Borderlands 4. Since its launch on September 12, the looter shooter has drawn strong engagement, but players on consoles and PC have highlighted stability and optimization issues that the team is now actively investigating.
When asked about performance struggles on consoles, including reports of memory leaks and restrictive field-of-view settings, Timmins confirmed that the development team is aware of the problems. In response to one player’s suggestion that the console FOV was deliberately set to mask technical shortcomings, Timmins stated, “It’s 75 and we’ve already said we’re working on a patch to expose fov to consoles. This requires testing to make sure we can stand behind it, and give players what they expect.” He also emphasized that patches to improve stability and performance are in progress, though no exact timeline has been provided.
Beyond technical performance, Timmins also offered insight into design choices around progression and difficulty. He explained that contracts, one of the game’s repeatable activities, are not included in the difficulty scaling system. Instead, campaign progression is tied more directly to side content and optional activities. “We never want to encourage players to grind needlessly,” Timmins wrote, clarifying that enemy scaling is designed to encourage exploration across regions, with Dominion areas intentionally set at a higher challenge level.
On the topic of character specializations, Timmins noted that Borderlands 4 places more focus on individualized growth rather than account-wide power boosts seen in past entries. “We wanted players to really specialize their individual characters,” he said, reflecting feedback that previous systems created imbalances between players who took different approaches to progression.
Timmins also reiterated Gearbox’s long-term commitment to improving the game post-launch. In reply to a comment comparing the game unfavorably to Borderlands 2, he stated that the studio is determined to keep innovating. “We committed to keep innovating and striving for greatness and not rest on our laurels,” he wrote.
Earlier this week, Gearbox also acknowledged ongoing PC crashes and performance problems, with a stability patch scheduled for release later this week. Combined with console-focused updates now in testing, the studio has assured players that addressing technical issues across all platforms remains its highest priority.
Borderlands 4, developed by Gearbox Software and published by 2K, launched on September 12, 2025, for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC. A Nintendo Switch 2 version will be released on October 3, 2025.
