Gearbox CEO Randy Pitchford rants at internet randoms (again), insists we should ‘root for’ the Borderlands 4 team or ‘we’ll all pay the price’, then whips around and says ‘I love criticism’

Randy Pitchford, CEO of Gearbox software and prolific poster, has once again taken to social media to get into metaphorical fistfights with the developer’s critics over Borderlands. In case you’re unfamiliar, Pitchford has a bit of a habit of this—like when the Borderlands movie bombed horrendously, or when he compared his team to The Beatles.

The battle he’s picked this time is over a public muting of a one X user MitsuShow late last month, wherein he declared: “Sorry. Don’t need this energy right now as the team and I bust our ass to make BL4 the best Borderlands game yet. I’m going to block you in a day or so after you’ve had a chance to see this. Nothing against you or your opinion. Just shouldn’t expose myself to this now. Sorry.”

That is honestly fair enough—regardless of your opinions on the man, I think we can all broadly agree that paying attention to the masses on social media when you’re trying to make something, in the public eye, is probably a bad move. However, when a different fan challenged the muting, saying that MitsuShow’s concerns came from a “place of love”, Pitchford, uh, went off on one.

“I didn’t see any critique,” comes Pitchford’s opening silo. “I just saw shitty negativity that was demotivating. Want the best Borderlands? Root for us and cheer us on. If you take [a] developer’s passion for granted, we’ll all pay the price.” The implication here—that I broadly disagree with—is that negativity isn’t useful, and in fact impedes the development process. Pitchford then immediately says: “I love criticism.” Are we sure?

“And, thankfully, I have never been in short supply. Don’t gaslight me on his post. It wasn’t criticism. It was pessimism. It’s toxic for people killing themselves for your entertainment, so fuck that noise.”

I’ve got my tongue firmly lodged in my cheek, here, but I want to take a second and say that I’m not particularly interested in ragging on someone who’s clearly having a bad time—on the other hand, I’ve never felt so inclined to shake someone by the shoulders and yell at them to log off.

Developing a game is stressful, especially in the age of the relentless and confusingly-applied culture wars, and abuse from randoms towards devs is unacceptably common. However, I think if you’re reaching for egregious uses of the word ‘gaslighting’ (which means a prolonged and abusive attempt to make a victim question their sense of reality, not someone advocating for a critic you muted on X) you’re probably getting a little lost in the sauce.

Let’s just hope that Borderlands 4 is going to be, you know, good. For the sake of Mr. Pitchford’s blood pressure more than anything.