Gearbox CEO Randy Pitchford is bringing attention to himself on social media again. But this time, it’s not about game prices or apologies. Why did he ask us if good reviews or hours played were a better metric for judging the quality of games?
Borderlands 4 has a lot riding on its back, given the recent drama with not just Pitchford but also with the review bombing of the Borderlands games on Steam. These questions are probably related to the upcoming game, but what exactly is the purpose here? Guess we’ll have to wait and find out.
Why is Randy Pitchford asking fans these questions?
Over the past few days, Pitchford has been polling his X (formerly Twitter) followers about what makes one game “better” than another. In one poll, he asked us whether “positive user reviews” or “high actual play time” is a more accurate indicator of game quality. With over 3,600 votes, 62% of people voted for play time, and Pitchford seemed to agree with that result.
Thinking about how to measure if a game is “better” than another game. Which of these metrics do you think are more likely to correlate with a better game – The positive votes of players on a website or their actual in-game play time being high?
— Randy Pitchford (@DuvalMagic) June 3, 2025
But he does note that the metric must be relative to a game’s scope. And that does make sense. For example, players might engage with 100% of an indie title that’s 20 hours long. But then they might only spend 10-15 in a large-scale game to just do the story or something.
Pitchford then took the same principle and applied it to the Borderlands franchise. He asked followers to compare Borderlands 2 and Borderlands 3 in terms of perceived size and longevity. Most of the voters chose Borderlands 2, despite the fact that Borderlands 3 has more content if you talk about sheer volume.
Almost two thirds of you believe that hours played correlates more with quality than user review scores (which 90% of you think are more reliable than critic reviews). I tend to agree so long as play time is relative to the scale/scope of the game. For example, a short game where… https://t.co/7lDm9fbUpv
— Randy Pitchford (@DuvalMagic) June 4, 2025
But what’s the goal here? Why is Pitchford asking these questions? Is he somehow gauging interest in Gearbox Studio’s upcoming release of Borderlands 4? The game is coming out this September, but Pitchford’s questions about defining “better” seem to suggest that Gearbox may still be considering something.
Will this affect Borderlands 4 somehow?
The play time vs reviews debate isn’t really airtight either. As some users point out, hours don’t necessarily mean quality. Sometimes, some players just play a game past the intended period of time for their own regions. One X user summed it up perfectly by saying, “Play time could be tricky. Look at Starfield. A lot of players with more than 100 hours said it was a horrible game.”
Given all this context, is it really that hard to believe that Pitchford’s random polls are less philosophical and more of a soft test for community sentiment ahead of Borderlands 4’s release? We’re rapidly closing in on the release date, and the stakes are higher than ever for the game.
The Borderlands games have gone through a tough time in the last few weeks. First, we had Pitchford’s comment about real fans buying the game for $80, and then the franchise started getting reviews bombed over a change in the EULA. Maybe this is why Pitchford is asking us all this in the polls. Maybe it isn’t. We really don’t know.
This post belongs to FandomWire and first appeared on FandomWire
