Borderlands 3 may have had a rocky few months since its hyped-as-all-hell reveal, but it appears to be bouncing back into the minds of gamers pretty hard this week with tons of news from the developers, Gearbox Software. The biggest reveal comes courtesy of the somewhat controversial and eccentric head of Gearbox, Randy Pitchford.
I say controversial because Pitchford has said and allegedly done some really strange, and sometimes dumb, things online. Recently ole’ Randy shared an animal abuse video on Twitter, claiming he did so out of curiosity, much to the outrage of many. Before that the same executive was accused of assault by the former voice actor for ClapTrap. And then there’s the accusations that Pitchford pilfered employee bonus funds from Gearbox for other projects.
So it’s OK if you don’t really care what Pitchford has to say considering all of that, but it’s fair to say that this is pretty big news for Borderlands fans. According to a tweet from earlier this week, Pitchford said, “We are committed to supporting cross-play for Borderlands 3 with our partners as soon as practicable after launch.”
The casual reveal of such a feature leaves a ton of questions, but it’s still great to see that the game is getting cross-platform play. What modes or other gmaeplay elements will be covered by this cross-play suite are unknown, but it can reasonably be assumed that the upcoming shooter will support some form of co-op play across platforms, possible with some kind of input-based restrictions to prevent PC players from dominating console ones.
The idea of cross-plaform support has been a hot topic in the video game industry for a while now. With more and more gamers wanting to play with their friends and family across the globe, the highly connected nature of modern humanity means that this should be easier than ever to accomplish. And for multi-platform titles with multiplayer, it makes no sense to lock players into smaller pools of the playerbase which only serve to reduce the longevity of a multiplayer experience. Because as more people leave a game on one platform, said game runs the risk of having too few players online to remain viable. I don’t think that will be a problem for a massive AAA title like Borderlands 3 anytime soon, but it’s pertinent to get ahead of such problems before they happen.
Borderlands 3 arrives on Xbox One, PS4, and PC on September 13, 2019.