Borderlands 4, Gearbox’s sci-fi open-world looter shooter, was set to launch on September 23. But the FPS sequel is now launching two weeks ahead of schedule, as accidentally leaked by Gearbox CEO Randy Pitchford. And that’s cool, but it also has me wondering what it means for Grand Theft Auto 6.
On April 29, Pitchford shared a video on social media about Borderlands 4. He started the video off hinting that he had some bad news to share about the upcoming shooter, though this turned out to be a ruse as he soon pivoted to confirm that development on the game was going great. As a result, Pitchford announced in the cellphone video that instead of Borderlands 4 coming out near the end of September, it was now launching on September 12, 11 days earlier than first announced.
Pitchford then promptly deleted the video off of Twitter, and followed it up with a tweet implying that he shouldn’t have posted that announcement until later in the day. “Oops - time zones… Reposting momentarily :) .” The news has since been announced officially via the Borderlands account.
“The team has been working very hard and everything is going great actually,” said Pitchford in the video. “In fact, everything is kinda going the best-case-scenario. The game is awesome. The team is cooking. And so, the launch date for Borderlands 4 is changing. We’re moving it forward....Holy, holy, what?! This never happens, you guys, this never happens.”
Announced back in the summer of2024, Borderlands 4 is the next main installment in the super-popular looter shooter series from Gearbox and 2K. The upcoming FPS got its original September 23 launch date back in February. Borderlands 4 is being developed for PC, Switch 2, PS5, and Xbox Series X/S.
Players will get a chance to see more of Borderlands 4 during an upcoming Sony State of Play on April 30 that will be about 20 minutes long and feature a deep dive into the shooter’s gameplay and world.
What does this mean for GTA 6's release date?
While this is exciting news for Borderlands fans, Grand Theft Auto fans waiting for GTA 6 are likely paying close attention as well. Borderlands 4 was one of the first big AAA video games of the year to nail down a fall release date despite GTA 6 not yet having an official launch date. And because both games are published by companies owned by Take-Two Interactive (Rockstar Games and 2K), that meant a lot of people (myself included) speculated that the original late September release was picked to avoid GTA 6's rumored October launch as much as possible while still giving Gearbox plenty of runway to finish their game.
Now that Borderlands 4 is launching earlier, what does that mean for GTA 6? It’s possible that it means nothing. It could be that GTA 6's internal date is still the same and Gearbox is just shipping its game a bit earlier because its development is going so smoothly that they can afford to do that. It’s also possible GTA 6's release date has moved up and that has forced Take-Two to push other games up, too, in order to avoid GTA 6.
I’ll be curious to see if Mafia: The Old Country, set to launch in late August, stays there or if it also gets moved up. Or potentially even gets delayed until after GTA 6, though that seems like it would be a death sentence for Mafia, as it’s likely to be, similar to past entries, a crime-focused open-world action game directly competing with GTA 6. In any case, things are getting interesting.