Gearbox has opened pre-orders for Borderlands 4, confirming a $69.99 price for the Standard Edition. This news alleviates fan concern that the upcoming shooter would retail at $80 and follows CEO Randy Pitchford’s controversial comment last month that “real fans” would find a way to purchase the game at that price.
The worry over Borderlands 4’s price stemmed from an exchange on X with Randy Pitchford on May 13 where a fan told him the game “better not be 80 dollars.” Pitchford responded by saying the decision was “Not my call”, then added the following:
“If you’re a real fan, you’ll find a way to make it happen. My local game store had Starflight for Sega Genesis for $80 in 1991 when I was just out of high school working minimum wage at an ice cream parlor in Pismo Beach and I found a way to make it happen.”
Pitchford’s comment attracted criticism from those who took this as him implying that players who couldn’t afford to pay $80 are not true fans. It also fueled speculation that Borderlands 4 would indeed follow the growing trend set by Mario Kart World of retailing at the higher price point.
Following the backlash, Pitchford addressed his comment by sharing a clip from a PAX East developer panel (which occurred before Pitchford’s controversial X post), where he elaborated on Borderlands 4’s then-potential price by speaking on the current realities of video game development budgets and pricing.
“It’s an interesting time, right?” says Pitchford during the Q&A session. “On one level, we’ve got a competitive marketplace where the people who make those choices want to sell as many units as possible and they want to be careful about people who are price-sensitive. So there’s some folks who don’t want to see prices go up, even the ones deciding what the prices are. There’s other folks accepting the reality that game budgets are increasing and there’s tariffs for the retail packaging and it’s getting gnarly out there, you guys. Borderlands 4 has more than twice the development budget than Borderlands 3. More than twice. So the truth is, I don’t know what the price is going to be.”
He then added, “As artists, we want everybody to have it. We want to make it as easy as possible for everybody to enjoy what we’re creating.”
In addition to the $70 Standard Edition of Borderlands 4, Gearbox is also offering a Deluxe Edition for $99.99 and a Super Deluxe Edition for $129.99. Each version contains a bevy of extra content, and you can read more details about what each edition entails on the game’s website.
Borderlands 4 will launch on September 12 for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC. A Switch 2 version is also planned for sometime this year.
