Having posted his way through the Borderlands movie’s $-90 million box office takings, Gearbox CEO Randy Pitchford seems to be doing exactly the same thing with the company’s latest tight spot.
While the reveal of Borderlands 4 has been hailed as Randy Pitchford’s ultimate “big brain move” in its attempt to distract from the abysmal failure of the Borderlands movie, it doesn’t really change the fact that the movie lost nearly $90 million of its $110 million budget. And unfortunately, any goodwill Pitchford may have garnered by announcing the sequel appears to have been burned away by the release of the latest Risk of Rain 2 DLC. The first expansion to have been released by Gearbox since it purchased the IP has been plagued by technical issues, and the company is getting chewed up on social media.
Cue Randy Pitchford heading back to Twitter, celebrating Risk of Rain 2’s charge up the Steam charts. Some players, however, weren’t particularly impressed that Pitchford appeared to be taking credit for the efforts of original developer Hopoo, and a bit of a spat ensued, culminating in one response from a player who said that while they assumed Risk of Rain could still be good, they doubted Pitchford’s “judgement and shot calling ability to do anything good anymore.”
I’m going to keep making stuff. I wish everything could be a hit, but that is not how it works. The greatest musical act of all time, The Beatles, had a 25% hit rate. I’m sure every song they recorded was done with love and commitment to the art and belief in the quality of…August 28, 2024
Pitchford’s response is poetry. “I’m going to keep making stuff,” he said. “I wish everything could be a hit, but that is not how it works,” he continues, before invoking “the greatest musical act of all time, The Beatles,” who he claims “had a 25% hit rate.” Pitchford concludes his invocation by asserting his assuredness that “every song they recorded was done with love and commitment to the art and belief in the quality of their work.”
Now I, personally, am not a massive Beatles fan, but there is something truly baffling about this. I think the words “25% hit rate” are likely to stoke some significant ire alone, but a little piece of my brain is breaking as I try to rectify anything that came out of, say, Let It Be, with anything that Gearbox placed into frankly any of the Borderlands games. I will give Pitchford some credit for the sentiment that “my favorite artists, performers, and entertainers have all made things I didn’t like so much,” and “when artists have a miss, that’s when they need fans the most to root them on.” But still, this is a man speaking as the CEO of a major developer, backed by the same publisher as GTA 6, not someone struggling to scratch out a living from their art.
Pitchford isn’t a stranger to saying things on Twitter that may come back to bite him, as noted by the reaction to Borderlands 4’s presence on Steam despite its creator’s fondness for the Epic Games Store.
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