As the Borderlands movie slides into oblivion and Risk of Rain 2's new DLC burns, Gearbox CEO Randy Pitchford compares himself to The Beatles, who he says only "had a 25% hit rate"
Aug. 30, 2024“I’m sure every song they recorded was done with love and commitment to the art”
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Having posted his way through the Borderlands movie’s $-90 million box office takings,GearboxCEO Randy Pitchford seems to be doing exactly the same thing with the company’s latest tight spot.
While the reveal ofBorderlands 4has been hailed asRandy 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.”
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 asGTA 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, asnoted by the reaction to Borderlands 4’s presence on Steam despite its creator’s fondness for the Epic Games Store.
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I’m GamesRadar’s news editor, working with the team to deliver breaking news from across the industry. I started my journalistic career while getting my degree in English Literature at the University of Warwick, where I also worked as Games Editor on the student newspaper, The Boar. Since then, I’ve run the news sections at PCGamesN and Kotaku UK, and also regularly contributed to PC Gamer. As you might be able to tell, PC is my platform of choice, so you can regularly find me playing League of Legends or Steam’s latest indie hit.
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