Gearbox has been heavily teasing a long, long-awaited announcement of Borderlands 3 at PAX East, but that announcement might be accompanied by what is sure to be controversial news (if it turns out to be true). Randy Pitchford, CEO of Gearbox, has recently been posting a few updates on Twitter that might be suggesting that Borderlands 3 will be exclusive to the Epic Games Store whenever it launches on PC.
He started with a tweet that simply stated, “I am excited to support the Epic Games Store”. He went on to follow that up with another update, talking about how Epic cares about “the health of our industry and the value of creators big and small”, calling the steps they’ve taken with their storefront “welcome and due”.
When a response to his tweets expressed concern that they might be hinting at an upcoming announcement of Epic Games Store exclusivity for Gearbox’s upcoming games, Pitchford responded, “What’s wrong with that? A PC is a PC – who cares which store you get your games from? I’m just curious to learn the mind-set. I am a customer on lots of different PC platforms.”
None of this, of course, is official confirmation that Borderlands 3 will be exclusive to the Epic Games Store by any means. It might still end up coming to Steam (assuming it gets announced soon, that is), and these tweets might just be reflecting Pitchford’s own personal takes on the matter. If they’re representative of a shift in policies for Gearbox, however, it should be interesting to see how things develop.
Epic Games very clearly intends to fight the dominance of Steam with such exclusivity deals, as they have made very clear themselves. Since the store’s inceptions, multiple games have announced exclusivity deals, from major AAA releases like The Division 2 and Metro Exodus to anticipated indie titles like Super Meat Boy Forever and, most recently, Phoenix Point.