The Borderlands movie has been a commercial and critical disappointment since it launched last week, but as a possible side-effect, there has been a spike in interest in the video games. Possibly driven by cinemagoers looking to experience the source material, Borderlands 3 has seen a moderate increase in users and has reached its highest concurrent Steam player count since February 2023. According to SteamDB, the game recently peaked at 12,379 players, which is a big increase compared to previous months.
Borderlands 2 also fared better--7,938 peak Steam players recently--and while they're nowhere near as high, the original Borderlands and Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel games have also seen increased activity. As mentioned above, this is only for the Steam version of the Borderlands games, so the final results are likely even higher when you factor in users from the Epic Games Store, Nintendo Switch, Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, PS5, and PS4.
Interestingly, Gearbox added a new feature to Borderlands 3 that allows you to skip the entire main campaign with a new character, provided that you have a max-level character and have beaten the campaign once.
This allows you to jump straight into the Borderlands 3 endgame with a new max-level character, and is a welcome quality-of-life update considering that it can take dozens of hours to max out a single Vault Hunter in the game. If you'd been wanting to try out other characters but were put off by the thought of repeating the polarizing campaign--which probably looks much better in comparison to the film's story--this is a nice option to help you jump back into action.
At GameSpot, our Borderlands movie review scored it a 2/10, calling it an "unremarkable" and "disposable" experience. Other critics have been much harsher, as some of them have described Borderlands as a "miserable failure" and "generic."
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Borderlands 2 also fared better--7,938 peak Steam players recently--and while they're nowhere near as high, the original Borderlands and Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel games have also seen increased activity. As mentioned above, this is only for the Steam version of the Borderlands games, so the final results are likely even higher when you factor in users from the Epic Games Store, Nintendo Switch, Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, PS5, and PS4.
Interestingly, Gearbox added a new feature to Borderlands 3 that allows you to skip the entire main campaign with a new character, provided that you have a max-level character and have beaten the campaign once.
This allows you to jump straight into the Borderlands 3 endgame with a new max-level character, and is a welcome quality-of-life update considering that it can take dozens of hours to max out a single Vault Hunter in the game. If you'd been wanting to try out other characters but were put off by the thought of repeating the polarizing campaign--which probably looks much better in comparison to the film's story--this is a nice option to help you jump back into action.
At GameSpot, our Borderlands movie review scored it a 2/10, calling it an "unremarkable" and "disposable" experience. Other critics have been much harsher, as some of them have described Borderlands as a "miserable failure" and "generic."
Source