After six years, Borderlands is making a return but the series’ most recognizable voice won’t be returning. Voice actor David Eddings has voiced the annoying yet very lovable Claptrap since the start but will not be returning for the third mainline Borderlands title for major reasons.
Eddings has been vocal against developer Gearbox since earlier this year when he made some bold claims about executives pocketing large sums of money instead of paying bonuses to employees amongst other incredibly serious allegations.
Now that Borderlands 3 has been officially revealed, Eddings has pushed out even more allegations stating that Gearbox CEO Randy Pitchford assaulted him and he was underpaid. When talks for Borderlands 3 began, Eddings asked Gearbox for better pay but claimed they couldn’t afford him.
“… for the first time, I insisted on getting paid for my performance and all of a sudden they couldn’t afford me.”
Pitchford countered this saying they offered to compensate him well but Eddings declined the offer. “[Eddings] was offered 2x scale – twice union rates. He refused the offer,” said Pitchford. In another Tweet, he doubled down on his response. “Eddings is bitter and disgruntled about having been terminated… I don’t want him to do it unless he wants to do it, as motivation affects performance.”
David Eddings quickly fired back saying he would’ve worked for free had Gearbox paid him royalties he was owed for previous titles and apologized for Pitchford allegedly assaulting him. “I ultimately offered to do it for “free” in exchange for past royalties owed plus an apology for something I’ve never spoken about publicly until now: Randy physically assaulted me in the lobby of the Marriott Marquis at GDC 2017,” said Eddings. “Personally, I think Randy’s been on tilt the last few years. He’s not the victim he portrays himself to be. I even blocked him a couple years ago for stalking me on social media. Enough is enough.”
Gearbox addressed the claims of poor compensation in a statement to IGN, detesting Eddings’ claims.
“Gearbox works to treat and compensate all voice actors at industry standards. We offer the opportunity for salaried employees to voice characters in the game, but is not a mandatory responsibility to their job requirements. In this particular case, now that he was no longer an employee, we offered him an industry-standard rate, but were not able to reach an agreement. We are confident and happy with Jim Foronda as the voice of Claptrap, and we are confident our fans will be too.”
Notable voice actor Troy Baker also revealed he won’t be reprising his role as Rhys. Pitchford said that the audio director told him that Baker declined to return but Baker responded back saying this wasn’t true and was rejected by Gearbox.
Borderlands 3 will release this September on Xbox One, PS4, and PC.
