Borderlands 2 Goes Free on Steam Amidst Intense Review Bombing

Despite its best efforts to repair its relationship with the gaming community – seriously damaged by Gearbox CEO Randy Pitchford's recent comments – the Borderlands franchise still can't seem to escape the controversy, taking three Ls for every attempted W.

First, Pitchford tried to retract his "real fans would find a way to pay $80 for a video game" comment, only to be slammed for his weak non-apology, then, he was criticized for acting salty about the whole ordeal when announcing Tiny Tina's Wonderlands going free on EGS, and now, the studio made Borderlands 2 – considered by many to be the best game in the series – completely free on Steam for a limited time, only for that move to blow up in their faces once again.

While on paper, making a 100% discount on one's magnum opus of a game sounds like a brilliant idea, Gearbox couldn't have messed up more when it comes to the timing. As it happens, the discount launched amid an intense and completely justifiable review bombing of the entire Borderlands franchise, sparked by Take-Two and 2K's recent Terms of Service updates, described by many as spyware-esque.

As Steam user 000000 – who has over 343 hours in Borderlands 2 – succinctly put it, this game's and many others' new EULA makes mods a bannable offense, introduces forced arbitration clauses and waivers of class action and jury trial rights in most regions of our planet, can get you banned for using a VPN while connecting to online servers, and prohibits accessing game content on a Virtual PC.

As if that wasn't enough, under the new ToS, publishers can now collect all sorts of information about you, including your phone number, postal address, IP address, unique IDs, purchase history, credit and debit card information, shipping address, details about the games and platforms you use, device type, software and hardware details, language settings, browser type and version, operating system, information about how you interact with the games (e.g., content viewed, pages visited, clicks, scrolls), inferences made from your information and web activity, and the contents of communications via chat features, just to name a few.

Although the whole EULA controversy started back in mid-May, the discount drew far more attention to the issue, significantly ramping up the review bombing – so much so that only 18% of Borderlands 2's recent reviews are positive. Here's that Second Wind (pun intended) of negative reviews illustrated on Steam's graphs:

You can read more reviews and grab a free copy of Borderlands 2 – provided you agree to the new ToS – by clicking this link.

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