The fifth mainline entry in Gearbox’s looter shooter Borderlands franchise, Borderlands 4, has been in the news for both good and bad reasons, with the recent one being the game’s massive decline in Steam concurrent player numbers.
Borderlands 4 peaked at 304,398 concurrent players on Steam during it’s release weekend on Sunday, Sept 14th. And since then, the game has been losing its player base with minor increases noticed during each weekend.
While long-time Borderlands fans know that this is not something new. A recent story from The Game Post talking about the decline in Steam concurrent players sparked a series of heated conversations within the gaming community.
After reading most of the responses on X and Reddit about this, here is the summary of the most common ones:
- Players who never played Borderlands were complaining about how awful the game is
- Players finished the game, and due to the lack of end-game content, they just stopped playing
- Technical issues like bugs, crashes, performance and such pushed many players away from the game
- It’s a story game
- Some players were busy with their usual rant: You spent 400+ hours in the game and now talk about lack of content. You are the problem.
There’s much more. But that’s not worth talking about, as the point is, Borderlands 4 is not a live service game.
While Borderlands 4 does offer some small titbits of live-service elements, like weekly Wildcard Mission, Big Encores, Maurice’s Vending Machine, free seasonal events, etc, it is by no means a live service game.
While player count does help in estimating how well the game has sold, a more stable player retention matters only when we talk about live service games like Destiny 2.
It is an always-online game, and every activity is hosted on a dedicated server while the game follows an overall hybrid model: client-server and peer-to-peer (P2P). There’s a lot of cost attached to maintaining the overall infrastructure.
In short, live-service games like Destiny 2 need a stable concurrent player base to survive and profit, while a game like Borderlands 4 needs to sell well. It is as simple as that.
Now, this is not the first time a Borderlands game has gradually lost its concurrent players.
Here’s a look at the concurrent players history for the past games:
Borderlands – GOTY Edition
Borderlands 2
Borderlands 3
That said, here’s a look at the concurrent player history for one of the biggest releases of 2025, Hollow Knight: Silksong:
The point is, a campaign-based game losing concurrent players means nothing and what matters is the peak players it reached, as that gives us an estimate on how well the game sold on the platform.
As for player retention goes, for games like Borderlands, many players return whenever there is new paid or free content.
For example, if you check the Borderlands 2 concurrent players graph, you will find a massive spike in concurrent players in June 2019. 81,206 players to be exact.
Why was that? Because we got a major DLC, Commander Lilith and the fight for Sanctuary.
That being said, while Borderlands 4 is a great game that delivers on many fronts, whether it is the story, the gameplay, movement in particular, the gun-play, etc, it does lack many things, including proper end-game content.
Currently, the Weekly Big Encore Boss, Wild Card Mission and Maurice’s Vending Machine are a few things officially considered end-game content in Borderlands 4, which, in actuality, is not end-game at all.
In fact, as a player myself, the side quests, starting fresh with other Vault Hunters, the Phosphene hunt, and such things, are what keep most players going. And the ones who are already done with that or don’t like doing those things have stopped playing the game until something new arrives.
And so, there’s no point in comparing how many numbers Borderlands 4 has lost since launch or such things.
Yes. Borderlands 4 sales, despite topping charts on Steam, have been slower compared to its predecessor. The overall sales numbers are still good, making it one of the biggest AAA releases of this year.
Lastly, there’s a series of free and paid content coming to Borderlands 4, starting next week, which will help the game get new and returning players. On top of that, we also have an ongoing 20% off Sale on Steam and Epic Games Store, until Oct 20th, which should get more players in the game.
