Borderlands 3 Epic Store launch twice as big as Borderlands 2’s peak ever Steam player count

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We’ve been talking for some time now about how Borderlands 3 would likely end up being a watershed moment for the Epic Games Store and it appears Gearbox’s shooter may well have ended up the game which broke the Epic Store hoodoo.

Gearbox CEO and walking, talking PR disaster, Randy Pitchford, has now claimed the launch day peak concurrent players of Borderlands 3 on the Epic Store is double Borderlands 2’s all-time high concurrent players.

“Fun Fact” began Pitchford, letting us know this is probably a fact which is only fun for him, “On PC, the data is that the launch day peak concurrent players of Borderlands 3 is about *twice-as-high* as the all time peak concurrent players of Borderlands 2. WOW! You guys are great!”

Congratulations are in order, we guess, although this always felt a dead cert from the moment it was announced. The Borderlands franchise well and truly elevated itself into the list of mega-franchises with Borderlands 2, so all that was required was more of the same.

Despite all this though, there are some extra bits we’d just love to know. First of all, how many copies were sold, and secondly, how well will Borderlands 3 do once it comes to Steam. Impossible to answer, for now, but comparing a Borderlands 2 Steam launch to a Borderlands 3 Epic Store launch is very much apples and oranges. Borderlands 2 was big, but it wasn’t an immediate giant, settling in for the long haul and eventually hitting an estimated 11 million copies sold on Steam.

Fair play though, it’s a very strong start for Borderlands 3 despite PC mishaps, reports of fairly poor performance, and some absolutely broken DX12 support. Nothing, it seems, gets in the way of Claptrap’s meteoric rise.