Borderlands 4PC performance has improved significantly since its fall 2025 launch, and now Gearbox has explained exactly how it got here. Expectations were mixed ahead of the game's release, thanks to several controversies surrounding its potential price, recommended specs, and comments from CEO Randy Pitchford. Six months later, Borderlands 4 is in a different place than when it came out, and that's for the best for PC gamers.
Despite a largely successful debut, Gearbox's looter shooter quickly lost its footing. It took about two months Borderlands 4 losing 96% of its player base, although critical reviews were largely positive. However, Steam users felt differently, and the title fell to a “Mixed” rating on the platform. Many of the most persistent complaints revolved around the game's performance, with PC users often citing FPS drops, stuttering, and crashes, even when playing on high-end systems. Thankfully, the gearbox developers have since fixed these issues.
Gearbox says Borderlands 4's average FPS has improved by 20%
In a recent post on the official Borderlands 4 blog, Gearbox detailed the PC optimizations the game has received up to this point. PC performance has been a thorn in the game's side, with the past Borderlands 4 updates promise improvements, but some players feel they did the opposite. Over time, however, things got better, with Gearbox now claiming that average FPS has increased by roughly 20% between version 1.0.2 and the current version, version 1.5. At the game's lowest specs, average frame rates have climbed from 37.32 to 52.79 FPS, while on an RTX 4090 they went from 54.96 FPS to 78.43 FPS, without being “too noticeable in terms of visual fidelity,” according to Gearbox.
The post also detailed a variety of other fixes. Gearbox says that stuttering has reduced, with lower frame rates now falling closer to average, and game crashes have fallen to just 0.38% of all sessions, which is half of what it was in December. The post commented Borderlands 4s billions of weapons too, which explains how creating so many unique elements can be difficult. Gearbox developers now claim that the game allows graphics drivers to detect new material earlier, helping them prepare to render it when the time comes to let players enjoy the variety without their performance dropping as a result. In addition to that, some lighting and physics tweaks have reportedly been reduced Borderlands 4s GPU and CPU load when rendering visual effects.
Gearbox concluded the post by admitting that there is still more work to be done and promised further optimizations along the way. The studio had previously confirmed that Borderlands 4 will receive weekly updates and monthly updates in 2026, so presumably PC performance will continue to improve, barring unforeseen issues with additional content. If nothing else, it's good to see that the developers have taken the game's need for PC optimizations seriously and have made real progress in the matter. It's unclear if these upgrades will have any effect on player count or how people feel about the game in the future, but they're a necessary step nonetheless.
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While things are looking up for the looter shooter on PC, the same cannot be said for all platforms. After an indefinite delay, Gearbox has paused work Borderlands 4s Switch 2 version, giving it an uncertain future. The port isn't outright canceled, but there's no telling how long it will be before Nintendo fans can try the game on their console. The hiatus should divert more time and resources to the PC, PS5 and Xbox versions of Borderlands 4so that might be good news for those who already own a copy, but Switch 2 owners will have to wait a little longer.
- Released
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September 12, 2025
- ESRB
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Mature 17+ / Blood and Gore, Intense Violence, Sexual Themes, Strong Language, In-Game Purchases, User Interaction
Source: 2K
