Borderlands 4 deep dive: 2.5M+ players and $150M+ revenues
We zoom in on the launch of Gearbox's new looter shooter and look at how many hours Steam players have sunk into Silksong so far.
Now that I’m back from lovely Canada, we’re back to our usual cadence of two newsletters a week. But I’m not the only one who’s returned.
The king of looter shooters is finally back. And Borderlands 4, which launched on September 12, is performing well in these early days.
Performance issues aside, Borderlands 4 is mostly everything fans have wanted from the franchise, which is approaching 100 million sold, by the way!
Impressive early metrics for Borderlands 4
Borderlands 4 was last week’s top-selling game across Steam and consoles, so it’s no surprise that it’s already managed to amass over 2.5 million players across all platforms. That amounts to revenues of over $150 million.
At $150 million in revenues (minus platform cuts), we estimate that Borderlands 4 is about 60-65% of the way to breaking even.
We got to this number based on Gearbox CEO Randy Pitchford’s comments that Borderlands 4’s budget is over twice that of Borderlands 3’s (whose budget was $95 million, according to Jason Schreier’s sources).
That means Borderlands 4’s budget is likely somewhere in the ballpark of $200 million. It’ll easily leapfrog that. Needless to say, $150 million in revenue is huge and puts Borderlands 4 among 2025’s most lucrative AAA launches.
It has sold over 1.3 million copies on Steam, generating over $80 million in revenue on Valve’s platform.
And Borderlands 4 has shifted more than a million copies on console, with PlayStation slightly edging out Xbox so far. The Switch 2 version is arriving next month, too.
The markets where Borderlands 4 popped off
At launch, over half of Borderlands 4’s players on Steam are US-based, with China, Germany, the UK, and Canada rounding off the top 5 (by player country distribution).
Yes, we have China data! Reach out here to get your three-day unlimited-access trial of our platform.
The Borderlands 4 top 5 on PS5 is entirely Western, with the US again accounting for over half, followed by 5-8% player shares across the UK, Germany, France and Canada.
This mature-market-heavy distribution is common in a AAA game’s early days. As time goes on – and games get discounted – the shares in emerging markets tend to increase. It’ll be no different for Borderlands 4.
For example, Russia and Brazil are top 5 markets for 2020’s Borderlands 3 on Steam. And as you can see in the chart above, both Brazil and Russia are top 5 markets for Borderlands 4’s wishlisters.
What else Borderlands 4 players have played
Naturally, plenty of Borderlands 4 early adopters have played its predecessors. On Steam:
59% of Borderlands 4 players have played Borderlands 2 on the platform
51% have played Borderlands 3
22% played the standalone spin-off Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands
Affinity is even higher on PlayStation, due to PS Plus inclusions:
81% of Borderlands 4 players on PS5 have played Borderlands 3 on the platform
64% have played Borderlands: The Handsome Collection
50% have played Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands
Again, all three of these have been PlayStation Plus monthly games or part of the PS Plus game catalogue, skewing the shares up.
Loads of Borderlands 4 early adopters have played other big 2025 launches on their platform of choice, too:
In terms of AA experiences, 19% of Borderlands 4’s players on Steam have played Elden Ring Nightreign (20% for PlayStation), while 13% have played Expedition 33 (22% for PlayStation).
And over 30% of Borderlands 4 players across Steam and PlayStation have also played Monster Hunter Wilds.
Don’t let those ‘’only a tiny share of players play new games!’’ narratives throw you off. Shares are shares, and the free-to-play economy skews player numbers.
The fact is that even during a cost-of-living crisis, millions of gamers are willing to buy new games – at full price. And that’s backed up by our data and official sales numbers alike.
Technical issues and a case study on PR
The current consensus is that Borderlands 4 refines the franchise’s core gunplay and loot systems to their best state yet, offering tight combat, an insane variety of weapons, and a highly replayable endgame loop that hardcore fans will appreciate.
While technically impressive, performance issues, bugs, and rough edges on PC temper the experience.
Gearbox is hard at work on hotfixes for the performance issues, but the CEO’s defensive comments on X are doing little to quell concerns (and public reception of the launch).
Borderlands 4’s initial performance issues are dominating headlines, video essays, and podcasts across games media – as well as in general online gaming discussions. But that narrative should dispel over time as the game becomes better optimised.
Currently, though, Borderlands 4 has just a 64% positive rating among buyers on Steam who reviewed the game.
But CEO Randy Pitchford’s defensive comments are adding more fuel to the fire of the negative reviews, which you can see in many Borderlands 4’s reviews section on Steam, from which I’ve selected a few relevant ones below:
The lesson here is that it’s usually better to let PR do their thing and not be reactive – or risk stepping on toes (or rakes) amid valid consumer concerns.
For reference, I’ve been lucky enough to play Borderlands 4 on a top-of-the-line rig. I’ve followed Randy’s advice and messed with the settings a fair bit, but I’ve still had worse performance than I’d expect.
And while these technical issues will certainly be a thing of the past when we look back on Borderlands 4 in the coming years, this situation – candidly – could have been handled with a little more finesse.
Still, plenty of fans – myself included – are having a blast and sinking hours into Borderlands 4. Our data shows that over a million gamers have already played the game for over 20 hours – and it’s been out for less than a week!
Dedication.
An update on Silksong
Speaking of dedication, Silksong’s players on Steam have been devouring the Hollow Knight sequel. Our estimates show that Silksong has now passed 6 million players across all platforms, including over 3.5 million on Steam.
And our estimates also show that more than half of Steam Silksong players (almost 2 million people!) have played Silksong for over 20 hours, while 17.1% (over 600 K Steam users) have played for over 50 hours.
And most crazily of all: around 1% of Silksong’s Steam players (almost 40 K folks) have played for over 100 hours in the past two weeks. That’s two full work weeks (then some) of Silksong. We wonder how many of those folks have called in sick recently…
Like I said: dedication.
The last word
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