Gearbox Software CEO Randy Pitchford commented on a theoretical idea of the company’s newly-unveiled looter shooter Borderlands 3 being tied to a digital storefront as an exclusive. While no concrete admission has been made, the words of Pitchford are hinting that BL3 might be the next big timed-exclusive for the Epic Games Store.
2K/Take Two has exclusive publishing rights for Borderlands 3 and makes all decisions regarding price-points, territories, distribution and platform partnerships. Please direct all inquiries regarding any of those topics to 2K. We are *just* the talent. 1/3
— Randy Pitchford (@DuvalMagic) April 1, 2019
Borderlands 3 was officially unveiled just last week after years of news that developer Gearbox had been hard at work at their premier IP. And almost at the same time as the announcement, rumors started spreading across the internet that BL3 might be the newest and biggest game which will appear on the newly established Epic Games Store.
Epic has been aggressively pursuing games of all genres and budgets to become full or at least timed-exclusives on their digital storefront for PC. Among indie games that made the jump from Steam to EGS it were arguably Ubisoft’s The Division 2 and Metro: Exodus which led to much talk and dismay among PC gamers. It was never out of the question that Epic would follow with their unprecedented policy of convincing developers and publishers to forgo releasing their games on their direct competitor Steam.
As a customer, I’m happy to shop in different stores – already do! I’ve bought games from Xbox, Playstation, Switch, Steam, Origin, GOG, Humble, Uplay, Epic and other stores. To me, exclusives are fine when they come w/ advantages and when they are short – say, six months 🙂 2/3
— Randy Pitchford (@DuvalMagic) April 1, 2019
Still, Borderlands 3 would be a massive get for the Epic Games Store. The first two Borderlands games and the spin-off The Pre-Sequel sold close to an insane 30 million copies and BL3 will no doubt smash sales numbers as well. Fans of the original looter shooter game series had to wait years to get their hands on the first next-gen Borderlands game.
Randy Pitchford didn’t outright confirm that Borderlands 3 is going to be exclusive to the Epic Games Store but keeping in mind that there is really no other company at the moment that causes exclusivity talk, chances are high that it what Pitchford is talking about. Most interesting about his Tweets is that he mentions a hypothetical timed-exclusivity period of 6 months. Why would he even mention such a specific detail if there wasn’t a truth behind the rumors?
For what it’s worth, 2K’s decisions aside, myself and the team at Gearbox have a very keen interest in cross-platform play. We believe multi-platform support is a pre-requisite and Epic’s leadership with cross platform support is helpful to our interests there. 3/3
— Randy Pitchford (@DuvalMagic) April 1, 2019
Nonetheless, while it sure looks like Borderlands 3 is going to be a short timed-exclusive on the Epic Games Store, we’ll have to wait until Gearbox or publisher 2K officially confirms this.
