Borderlands 3, released last week, has already surpassed the all-time peak concurrent players record set by its numbered predecessor, Borderlands 2, on PC, a milestone that looks to have added fuel to the fire caused by the new game’s Epic Games Store exclusivity deal.
Randy Pitchford, the CEO of Borderlands developer Gearbox, shared those internal milestones earlier today, though his mention of data didn’t include any look at the actual peak concurrent player counts for either Borderlands 2 or Borderlands 3.
What he did share is that, just on launch day, Borderlands 3 nearly doubled Borderlands 2’s all-time concurrent player record on PC. Since that first tweet, Pitchford has followed up with another stating that concurrents are still trending upward, past that now-broken record, though platforms or specific numbers aren’t mentioned.
The game’s PC launch has been a controversial topic in some online circles, namely because it was one of the early big-name games to sign a timed exclusivity deal with Epic Games’ PC game storefront.
Due to that arrangement, the PC version of Borderlands 3 is only available through the Epic Games Store for six months following its release. It’s a deal other companies both before and after Gearbox have made, one no doubt influenced by the Store’s more generous 88/12 revenue split and, in the case of games like Ooblets, other financial incentives.
On the other side of things, the Epic Games Store has come under fire from PC favoring players for its lack of community-driven features compared to Steam’s offerings, and its regular use of high-profile exclusivity deals to get eyes on the relatively new platform.