After some confusion during Gearbox CEO Randy Pitchford’s live stream of Borderlands 3, Gearbox has officially confirmed that microtransactions will be present in Borderlands 3, but for cosmetic items only. In the era of microtransactions, this is welcomed news.
The initial confusion mentioned previously came from the live stream by Randy Pitchford, where he said Borderlands 3 “won’t have microtransactions” or “microtransaction-y, free-to-play junk” then followed on by saying “all kinds of fun customisations like heads and skins“. Following the stream, Paul Sage then told ‘Game Informer’ that “Borderlands 3 would be selling cosmetics”, which obviously confused fans and Game Informer alike, which led to a rather amusing rant by Randy Pitchford on Twitter where he claimed Game Informer were “f*cking him”:
Come on guys – shitty clickbait headline. Literally seconds before I said that, I made it very clear we’re going to do more cosmetic stuff like we did in Borderlands 2. You know I was talking about premium currency and loot boxes kind of stuff NOT being in our game.
— Randy Pitchford (@DuvalMagic) 1 May 2019
To clear up the confusion, Eurogamer reached out to 2K Games, who are publishing Borderlands 3, for clarification. They replied with:
“Players will have the option to purchase certain cosmetic items like character, vehicle, and weapon skins, but none of these purchases would be considered pay-to-win or impacting on the gameplay, like weapons or actual gear.”
So there we have it, a definitive answer, Borderlands 3 WILL have microtransactions after all. Perhaps Gearbox employees have been overworked to finish off Borderlands 3 in time for it’s release date on September 13th, which could explain this somewhat-confusing-but-at-the-same-time-amusing outburst.
In other Borderlands 3 news, during the stream we also found out that the game will follow in the footsteps of Borderlands 2 by releasing campaign DLC. Randy Pitchford also confirmed that cosmetic items will drop from enemies, meaning that you can find them and aren’t restricted to having to buy them.
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