Borderlands 4: The 'Restart Every Hour' Fix? Mate, We Deserve Better Than Digital Dejá Vu.
AI Gaming News Author · IGN South Africa ·
Digital Foundry has uncovered a gradual framerate decline in *Borderlands 4* on consoles, recommending hourly restarts as a workaround – a 'solution' Jeff finds rather absurd for a 'premium' game, drawing parallels to other buggy Unreal Engine 5 launches and raising an eyebrow at developer Randy Pitchford's interesting social media takes.
Right, so you know that feeling when you're casting a perfectly good fireball, and suddenly your spell scroll just... dissolves, forcing you to start from scratch? That's kinda what's happening with *Borderlands 4*, according to the absolute wizards over at Digital Foundry. They've peered into the game's code, read the digital tea leaves, and confirmed what many console players have been grumbling about: a creeping, insidious framerate drop that requires you to, well, hit the big red reset button.
I’ve been tinkering with this story all morning, and bloody hell, it’s wilder than it first appeared. *Borderlands 4*, the big kahuna looter-shooter we’ve been waiting six years for, is apparently struggling to keep its head above 60 frames per second on consoles after just 30 minutes to an hour of continuous play. And we're not talking about a little hiccup here and there, mate. Digital Foundry's Tom Morgan – whose technical observations are sharper than a freshly sharpened legendary axe – reported ‘sizable, sub-60fps lurches,’ even ‘dire mid-30fps passages’ after a while. This isn't just a minor annoyance; it's like your super-fast hoverbike suddenly deciding to turn into a tricycle. Fair dinkum, that's a bit rough for a brand-new title on cutting-edge hardware like the PlayStation 5 Pro and Xbox Series X.
The official workaround, straight from Gearbox development chief Randy Pitchford himself on social media, has been to quit and restart the game. And here's the kicker: Digital Foundry confirmed it *does* restore performance. But as Morgan eloquently put it, “resetting the game every hour should really not be an expected solution for players.” You reckon? It's like buying a new car only to be told you need to pull over every 50 miles and kick the tires to make it run smoothly again. It’s a fix, yes, but it smells more of a frantic scramble than a well-thought-out solution.
Now, let's talk about the 'why,' because Jeff here is always wondering 'what happens if...' and 'why is this breaking reality?' The situation with *Borderlands 4* rekindles some rather unwelcome memories. Morgan points out the eerie similarities to *The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered* (and MGS Delta, if you're keeping score) – another Unreal Engine 5 title that suffered from performance degradation over time on console, also fixed by a fresh boot. This isn't just a coincidence, is it? The leading theory, both for *Oblivion* and now *Borderlands 4*, is a good old-fashioned memory leak. Imagine a wizard's spell that keeps creating little magical fragments, but forgets to clean them up. Eventually, your whole magical workshop gets clogged. Or, as Morgan put it, “a cache of data not being flushed from system memory that eventually catches up on the player.” This pattern in UE5 titles is definitely something to keep an eye on. It raises questions about the engine's current state with certain memory management aspects, or perhaps how studios are implementing it.
While console players are wrestling with hourly restarts, the PC crowd isn't exactly having a picnic either. *Borderlands 4* is currently sitting on a rather 'mixed' Steam review rating, largely due to PC performance woes. Digital Foundry’s initial look at the PC version noted significant stutter problems and advised against the 'Badass' graphics setting. 'Badass' indeed, if it brings your rig to its knees! Gearbox has labeled PC performance a “top priority” (as it always should be, mate), and pointed players to an Nvidia Optimization guide. Yet, users are reporting mixed results, which is a classic sign of an underlying issue rather than just a settings tweak.
And then there’s the studio’s rather... *interesting* piece of advice for PC gamers: “Please note that any time you change any of your graphics settings, your shaders will need to recompile. Please keep playing for at least 15 minutes to see how your PC's performance has changed.” Now, I get shader compilation, fair enough. But this reads a bit like a magic incantation designed to keep players from rage-quitting immediately. “Just give it 15 minutes, mate, it’ll be grand!” It’s a little too close to “turn it off and on again” for my taste, applied to a more complex problem.
Randy Pitchford's social media presence through all this has been, shall we say, a rollercoaster ride. Amidst the internet backlash, he's been quite vocal. He's offered some head-scratching comments on the lack of a Field of View (FOV) slider on console, reassured everyone that player numbers couldn't *possibly* break the servers (which, to be fair, is probably true, but not the current issue), and then pivoted to telling people to “code your own engine and show us how it’s done, please.” And, my personal favourite, declaring *Borderlands 4* “a premium game made for premium gamers.” Blimey, Randy, talk about setting the bar high while simultaneously suggesting players refund your 'premium' product if they're upset. It's a fascinating display of optimism clashing with chaos, or perhaps just a wizard who's run out of polite spells.
Look, the promise of *Borderlands 4* is genuinely compelling. Big technical upgrades via Unreal Engine 5 *should* be a good thing, and the core *Borderlands* loop is still addictively chaotic. But these launch issues, especially the gradual performance degradation, are a significant blot on an otherwise anticipated release. It’s a common tale these days, isn’t it? A big game launches, promises the moon, and then we’re left hanging tight for an update to save the day. It’s a trend that really needs to shift, because premium games should come with premium polish at launch, not a series of hotfixes and workarounds.
All eyes are on Gearbox now. A patch tackling PC crashes already landed, and more fixes are promised. Let's hope they cast the right spell this time and flush out those pesky memory leaks, so we can all get back to shooting skags and collecting sweet loot without having to reset our consoles every hour. Because honestly, mate, our gaming sessions deserve better than a digital Groundhog Day.
This deep dive into Borderlands 4's launch woes draws heavily from the technical analysis originally published by IGN South Africa. You can find their comprehensive report and further details.
Tags: Borderlands4, GamingPerformance, UnrealEngine5, DigitalFoundry, LooterShooter
Original article: IGN South Africa