LogInThe game is "secured" by Denuvo.
Gearbox
Borderlands 4 is the most important part of September for some people, but it's reportedly not as smooth as players hope.
Among those who were lucky to try the game out before the release, not everyone is happy with its performance. Arekkz Gaming, for example, noted that in the mission provided for a preview, the FPS stayed around 60-70 on an RTX 4080 setup with an i7 CPU and frame generation turned on. However, turning the framegen off resulted in frames dropping to 30-40.
A bigger issue was stuttering when moving between areas. The creator says that this will likely be fixed in the day-one patch, so we'll have to see.
Destructoid's Scott Duwe mentioned "numerous crashes, hitching, stuttering, and framerate drops," but 2K's PR team claimed that his PS "falls below the recommended specs, but does meet minimum specs," so this might be the reason.
Borderlands 4 is powered by Unreal Engine 5, infamous for its optimisation problems, although Epic Games' CEO thinks the issue is actually "the order of the development process."
Another culprit might be Denuvo, which is incorporated in the game, according to Steam. I don't think there are any players who have good things to say about the DRM system, as it is known for slowing games down. The developers, of course, deny the accusations and say the bad rep is thanks to pirates.
In any case, Gearbox CEO Randy Pitchford promises that "the Day 1 patch does a lot."
"That said, the expectation for using a below min-spec machine should be that the game is unplayable. That the game runs at all on your system is a miracle. That you can get 55 - 60 fps out of heavy combat is actually incredible given how the engine and what's going on under the hood. Your specification doesn't indicate if you're on SDD or HDD, but that could also explain some of the hitching. It's a big, bold, new, seamless world and I'm sorry to say that older hardware may not provide buttery smooth performance for the latest gen AAA games, as has always been the case since the dawn of PC gaming."
So perhaps everything will be fixed in no time, and we will get that experience that Pitchford would love to charge $200 for.
Borderlands 4 will be released on September 11. Stay tuned and join our 80 Level Talent platform and our Discord server, follow us on Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, Telegram, TikTok, and Threads, where we share breakdowns, the latest news, awesome artworks, and more.