Anyone who’s kept an eye on the recent Borderlands 3 livestream and subsequent Twitter furore will know there’s been plenty of confusion over the game’s monetisation system over the past few days.
Gearbox CEO Randy Pitchford, who is currently embroiled in a messy legal dispute with his former general counsel, announced during the stream that Borderlands 3 “won’t have microtransactions” or “microtransaction-y, free-to-play junk”, but simultaneously told viewers there would be “all kinds of fun customisations like heads and skins”. Creative director Paul Sage also told Game Informer Borderlands 3 would be “selling cosmetics”, which the publication observed seemed to contradict Pitchford’s claim of no microtransactions.
What followed was a bizarre Twitter rant in which Pitchford accused Game Informer of ignoring the context of his “no microtransactions” comment, and seemed to double down on his distinction between cosmetic microtransactions and “F2P style” microtransactions, such as premium currency and loot boxes.
