Borderlands 4’s Player Count Only Matters Because it Pretends to be Something it’s not

Borderlands 4 has now been out for over 3 months, and naturally, its player count has steadily dwindled. Having achieved an all-time peak player count of over 300,000 on Steam alone, the latest entry in the longstanding series once hit numbers that made it look like Borderlands was officially back and here to stay long-term. Before release, Borderlands 4‘s endgame was initially being talked up as something designed to keep players around for months after launch, coupled with an expansive 2026 roadmap. However, its player count has progressively declined, with it having lost around 96% of its Steam players within three months of its release.

Steam player counts aren’t everything, but since they’re more readily available than console numbers, they’re still one of the best tools for analyzing player retention. Even so, it’s worth asking whether a game like Borderlands 4 even deserves to be scrutinized through that lens at all, or if doing so only reinforces expectations the series has never truly committed to meeting. Ultimately, that question cuts to the heart of whether Borderlands 4 is being judged for what it truly is or what it’s merely pretending to be.

Borderlands 4 Masquerades as a Live-Service Game

Borderlands 4 isn’t a live-service game, nor does it outright claim to be. At the same time, it doesn’t seem to try all that hard not to be one either, as its many non-traditional live-service trappings often make it feel like one. It also isn’t the first game in the series to feature live-service elements, but it has taken greater strides toward the model than any of its predecessors ever did.

• Post-launch roadmap with extended content into 2026
• Seasonal mini events with unique rewards and cosmetics
• Paid Bounty Packs and story expansions
• Weekly activities and rotations
• Black Market vending machine rotations
• Ultimate Vault Hunter Mode & endgame progression loops
• Cosmetics and gear updates tied to events/content drops

It’s not uncommon anymore for a game like Borderlands 4 to have a post-launch roadmap with planned content, even an entire year after its release. In fact, post-launch roadmaps have become an increasingly standard part of modern releases, especially for games that want long-term support. The difference here is how closely Borderlands 4‘s post-release cadence resembles games that actively rely on player retention as a metric of success, despite not being a live-service game. As a result, its player count ends up being scrutinized in ways it was never built to withstand, largely because the game invites those comparisons in the first place.

Live-service elements like seasonal events, weekly activities, and vending machine rotations all make Borderlands 4 sound more like Destiny 2 than a Borderlands game, with an apparent aim to keep players invested in the game well beyond its release. In fact, Borderlands 4 reached a point after launch where it wasn’t receiving regular major updates anymore and instead relied primarily on its weekly rotation to pull players back in. Things have slowed down significantly for the game since, with Gearbox recently changing its update schedule to receive minor weekly updates and major updates only once a month.

Borderlands 3 Marked the Series’ First Big Move Toward Live-Service Trappings

Borderlands 4 isn’t the first Borderlands game to start moving things toward a live-service model. Rather, Borderlands 3 is more to blame for this shift, as it introduced some of the very same live-service trappings its successor would adopt, expand on, and normalize, even if it never fully crossed the line into being treated as a long-term service in its own right.

• Post-launch roadmap with extended content
• Free timed seasonal events
• Mayhem Mode updates
• Weekly Black Market rotations and SHiFT Codes
• Campaign DLC expansions
• Community events

Borderlands 4‘s live-service approach is nearly identical to its predecessor’s, but with one major difference. For the first time in the series, Borderlands 4 introduced a massive, seamless world with almost no loading screens, making it look more like an MMO (a proper live-service game) than the tighter experiences of earlier entries. Scale like that can only be expected to increase the expectation of long-term engagement, even though the series has never been at its best when it’s measured by how long players stick around. That becomes especially clear when looking back at Borderlands 2, a game still widely regarded as the franchise’s high point, largely because it never asked players to treat it like a live-service game in the first place.

Image via Gearbox Software

Borderlands 2’s Popularity Could Be Partially Owed to Its Pre-Live-Service Model

It could very well be that Borderlands 2 is the best game in the series because Gearbox was less concerned with long-term player retention and focused more on delivering a complete experience that stood on its own at launch. Its endgame existed to extend the fun for players who wanted more, not to satisfy a weekly checklist or sustain a revolving door of engagement metrics. Players weren’t asked to keep coming back on a schedule (even if many did and still do anyway) simply because the game felt finished, confident in what it was, and rewarding to play without anything extra.

That philosophy feels almost inverted in Borderlands 4. Rather than prioritizing a fully satisfying experience in the weeks immediately following launch, the game often feels designed around stretching engagement out over time, even when there isn’t enough substance to support it yet. Whereas Borderlands 2 seemed to be more about giving players a more nourishing meal right off the bat, Borderlands 4 feels like it’s more bent on handing out snacks that lack the nutritional value necessary to properly sustain its players. All of that could be at least part of the reason why every game since Borderlands 2 has been compared to it, and now Borderlands 4 is a sign that the franchise needs to pick a lane before there isn’t even a road to drive on anymore.

The Next Borderlands Needs to Pick a Lane

While it’s important to recognize that the Borderlands series has suffered over the years for a variety of reasons, its trend toward the live-service model after Borderlands 2 is clearly parallel to that suffering. However, it’s not that Borderlands can never be a live-service game, but that the third and fourth entries have straddled the fence between live-service and tradition without fully committing to either one. It’s worth considering that the next Borderlands game could indeed succeed as a live-service game if it is fully committed rather than flirting with it.

But as long as Borderlands keeps half-stepping toward that model, it’s going to keep running into the same problem. By trying to borrow just enough from live-service design to extend engagement, the series ends up putting less emphasis on delivering a satisfying experience up front, and player counts become one of the primary indicators of its success. That trade-off didn’t exist with Borderlands 2, and it’s hard not to see that shift in priorities as part of why the series is where it’s at now. In the end, Borderlands just needs to realize that it can’t be both a live-service game and another Borderlands 2. It can only be one or the other.

Released

September 12, 2025

ESRB

Mature 17+ / Blood and Gore, Intense Violence, Sexual Themes, Strong Language, In-Game Purchases, Users Interact