GearBox Software announced their new trailer for Borderlands 3 yesterday, but PC fans weren’t too happy about one thing.
The fact that they’ve decided to be exclusive to the Epic Games Store for the first 180 days after launch before migrating over to other platforms (ahem, Steam), pissed off a lot of PC players looking forward to the game. Epic Games, and Tim Sweeney, have both been under heavy fire for their anti-consumerism practices of herding gamers into their launcher just to play games.
Angry Steam users have already begin review bombing on Steam for Borderlands 2, Borderlands the Pre-Sequel, and Borderlands GOTY. Many have demonstrated their artistic ASCII art skills all over the Steam page. However, there have been a few more positive review surfacing to counter the negative ones, but this doesn’t mean that players are happy with GearBox’s decision to get paid out by Epic.
Many fans will either wait for the game to show on Steam, or simply not even buy the game at all. Tim Sweeney is getting a ton hate on his Twitter for leading the company in such a greedy fashion, even after Steve Allison, head of Epic Games Store, said that they won’t repeat the same mistake with Metro Exodus again. So basically, people are calling him a liar.
Metro Exodus was the start of this whole ordeal on the Epic Games Store. This annoyed many players and started the charade. Ones who already pre-ordered through Steam was honored by Epic before the news, but then overnight, the game disappeared from Steam and only was accessible through Epic.
Borderlands is the next target on the list to be poached by Epic. Although many fans are loyal to the game, this will likely affect many players’ opinions of GearBox. The game will be available April 2020, and many players will wait for this.
Regardless, this is a bad move by Epic. Even though they can secure deals like this, players aren’t shopping on their DRM platform, which defeats the purpose overall. They’re just getting more hate.
Freelance journalist and part-time gamer.
I specialize in indie games as I think they don’t get the attention they deserve. I’m just your typical consumer who has some opinions to share. I’ve been reviewing games since I was 12. I started out reviewing them with friends on old forums that now no longer exist. Then I went to online VoDs, which I’ve lost interest in.
And now I’m here to deliver my thoughts in written format!