While we don’t know if Borderlands 4 will jump onto the $80 price tag bandwagon, as Nintendo has recently set precedent for, Gearbox CEO Randy Pitchford, for whatever reason, is already defending it on social media—and has upset fans in the process.
After a Borderlands 4 feature video from Nintendo was released on X (formerly Twitter), one fan raised concerns, saying, “Don’t take that risk, alot of gamers aren’t gonna pay 80 dollars and feed this notion of constant increase of the price tag.”
Pitchford felt the need to make a direct response to this person with exactly 80 followers. He firstly says it’s not his call, then said that “real fans” will work for it.
“If you’re a real fan, you’ll find a way to make it happen,” he said in the reply tweet.” 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.”
A) Not my call. B) 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.
— Randy Pitchford (@DuvalMagic) May 14, 2025
The fan was not happy about that reply, and supposedly, neither are a lot of people. The tweet is at 488 likes at the time of writing, versus 3.5k replies and 1.9k reposts between direct retweets and quote posts—what the kids would call a “ratio.”
In case you’re a high-level executive who needs to understand better, this comes in the context that gamers aren’t happy with the permission Nintendo gave other publishers to raise the price tag of AAA games to $80. Even if the $60 price tag stayed the same throughout several rounds of inflation, many average gamers are feeling the hit of a recession at this very moment. Therefore, it’s pretty obvious that touting an $80 price tag and guilting players into accepting it would hurt to some degree.
Other game publishers and developers jumped in for a round on Pitchford. Devolver, an indie publishing company responsible for Hotline Miami, Cult of the Lamb, Inscryption and many other major indie hits, most notably jumped in with the claim that fans will be able to buy its upcoming FPS Mycopunk “for you and three of your friends for the price of one copy of Borderlands 4.”
Pitchford couldn’t let that go quietly, apparently: “Mycopunk is cheaper than a point of meth – probably has fewer side effects, too!” he ‘joked’ in a quote post. Pigeons At Play, the studio behind Mycopunk, has since posted a quote-tweet reading, “mycopunk is even better than meth”.
mycopunk is even better than meth https://t.co/tUGSInJHVw pic.twitter.com/BBNHMQMfru
— MYCOPUNK (@pigeons_at_play) May 21, 2025
Since then, Randy has posted a video on his profile from a PAX East panel where he’s asked about the price, and he more directly addresses the various concerns, including that the final price will be announced when all parties are ready. He directly admits that Borderlands 4 has “more than twice the development budget than Borderlands 3.” Still, he says he hopes that whatever price they set it at reflects the work and entertainment value of the product.
What do you think—are AAA developers getting out of hand? Did Pitchford say the right or wrong thing?
