Well lets see, you are coming out of one of the biggest tanks ever for the gaming movie franchise. The online mentions are far more jokes about your IP than any kind of nostalgia.
Sure, go exclusive! And make sure you code 60% of your next project with AI - the gamers will love it!
My take is that Borderlands 1 was boring, Borderlands 2 had decent game play but was held up by excellent writing and characterization and every Borderlands game since has been trying to recapture the magic of the second game but just feels hollow. They aren't terrible, but they aren't amazing either.
I feel like borderlands 1 was boring but had some high points, but the dlc really started to capture what the series would become. The general Knox dlc is still one of my favorites.
Why are people taking this even remotely seriously? This is Pitchford doing marketing for BL4. BL3 already showed people don't want Epic exclusivity and there's no such thing as Steam exclusivity. They can choose to release exclusively on Steam but that's just artificial exclusivity because nothing about Steam prevents them from releasing on Epic or GOG.
It's a pointless poll made by Pitchford either to keep BL4 in the media cycle or to just shit stir, possibly both.
That's what I mean by artificial exclusivity. There are games where the developer or publisher decided it's the only platform they will release on but that kind of "exclusivity" is not at all the same as Epic paying developers or publishers to not release on Steam. Valve/Steam doesn't prevent those games being released elsewhere, the developers/publishers themselves don't want to.
I could understand smaller (I'm talking literal solo devs or studios with less than 10 people) choosing to be exclusively on Steam. Supporting other platforms can have huge overhead costs for them. But for a studio the size of Gearbox there's no benefit to being exclusively on Steam. They have enough support staff to manage multiple stores. There maybe be suits wondering if it's worth being exclusively on Epic but there are no suits sitting around wondering whether to be exclusively on Steam or not, the answer is obviously not.
Any chance he’s putting the question on social media to convince other stakeholders above him?
It’s possible he was in a board meeting when some novice shareholder suggested “What if you take an exclusivity deal”? And he just didn’t have clear evidence on hand of that being vastly unpopular. Obviously that could be me being overgenerous to him.
There is a chance but what is he convincing them of? That they should take a non-existent exclusivity deal with Steam? They already have the data that exclusivity with Epic does not work and Steam doesn't do exclusivity deals.
They are objectively less popular with the newer stuff.
Tiny Tina's Wonderland is at 25% for recent reviews, 70% overall. That's not glowing. And with their new ELUA a lot of people are planning to boycott. I don't think Borderlands has the pull it once did.
Other than GOTY edition of the first game, this entire series has LAN (so far), which is commendable and stupidly rare! I hope the GOTY edition doesn't show that they're nixing this for BL4 as well.
5.6% of [respondents] users said they wouldn't pre-order [on Epic] knowing it would influence exclusivity, 2.7% said they would.
They really brought in those big dollars with making Borderlands 3 a timed exclusive on Epic. A whole 9%. Meanwhile, 91.6% of respondents preferred Steam. Bravo, Randy. Bravo.
Disappointingly, 53.9% still would buy it on Steam if it influenced exclusivity going forward. Even if it is Steam—which has a record of providing better service than its competitors—exclusivity helps nobody.