“Get woke, go broke”. That’s a maxim every businessman should live by, but it’s not. Instead a lot of them think that they can fill their game with Liberal degeneracy, anti-white propaganda, anti-American sentiments, and Left-wing agitprop themed around deconstructing Western values. There’s also a little bit of the problem of scattered releases across platforms with timed exclusivity, all of which contribute to games under-performing, which is apparently what happened with Borderlands 3, leading to reports indicating that sales projections were “off-base” and thus developers weren’t paid royalty bonuses as they had originally been promised.
Windows Central is reporting that there was an article on Kotaku detailing how Borderlands 3 didn’t quite recoup its budget and bolster profits in the way that management thought, according to anonymous developers working at Gearbox Software.
In the article it’s explained…
“[…] in a meeting yesterday, Gearbox boss Randy Pitchford told employees that Borderlands 3 bonus checks would be significantly lower than they hoped, according to three people who were present. He said the game had been more expensive than expected, the company had grown significantly larger than it had been in the past (it now operates a second studio in Quebec, Canada), and that their sales projections had been off-base. […]”
What did this mean for the employees? Lower bonus payout or no bonuses at all.
In the article, they explained that Gearbox Software president, Randy Pitchford, had told employees that if they didn’t like the 60/40 revenue share in quarterly royalties from sales profits, then they were welcome to quit.
Gearbox actually did send a response to Kotaku, not quite denying the charges made by anonymous employees, but reiterated that the game had only “officially” become profitable, meaning that for the past year it was recouping the estimated $140 million budget for the game, which allegedly skyrocketed because the team had to switch from the Unreal Engine 3 to the Unreal Engine 4 halfway through development.
Such a process can be a time-consuming and costly venture, taking anywhere between two to four years to complete depending on the complexity of the game and how much code has to be rewritten for base functionality and physics. That’s also not including changes and optimizations that may need to be undertaken for already completed assets that may or may not scale correctly with new lighting systems, particle effects, or shader filters.
Nevertheless, in the statement, Gearbox told Kotaku…
“Borderlands 3 represents an incredible value to gamers and an incredible achievement by the team at Gearbox Software. Our studio is talent-led and we believe strongly in everyone sharing in profitability. The talent at Gearbox enjoys participation in the upside of our games – to our knowledge, the most generous royalty bonus system in AAA. Since this program began, Gearbox talent has earned over $100M in royalty bonuses above and beyond traditional compensation.
“In the most recent pay period Gearbox talent enjoyed news that Borderlands 3, having earned revenue exceeding the largest investment ever made by the company into a single video game, had officially become a profitable video game and the talent at Gearbox that participates in the royalty bonus system has now earned their first royalty bonus on that profit. Additionally, a forecast update was given to the talent at Gearbox that participates in the royalty bonus to set expectations for the coming quarters. Gearbox is a private company that does not issue forward looking statements to the public, but we do practice transparency within our own family.”
The funny part about it is that if the game had been as successful as Take-Two Interactive CEO Strauss Zelnick had proclaimed then the revenue share should have been higher for the Gearbox employees, and in the statement they wouldn’t have revealed that the game had only “officially become profitable”.
If the game did have a reported $145 million budget and it’s just now becoming profitable, then it means that the has only passed some $150 million in revenue from the end of the last quarter. That fits in line with the reports that the game had only moved 3.3 million copies, as reported by VGChartz.
That seems about right given that the Steam Spy page indicates that the game has moved anywhere between 500,000 and 1 million copies on Steam.
We have no idea how many copies were moved on the Epic Games Store, but it’s certainly a lot lower than the 5 million shipped figure that Take-Two were touting back in September of 2019.
Couple that with Gearbox coming under fire recently for the gay marriage propaganda and inclusion of Lovecraftian themes in the Borderlands 3 DLC, from Social Justice Warriors no less, and basically the company has already lost favor among the woke crowd.
I used to like Borderlands before they started adding in all that Liberal degeneracy. But after they decided to go woke, it looks like the only thing left for them now is to go broke. If they keep on this trajectory it won’t be long before they join the Get Woke, Go Broke Master List.
(Thanks for the news tip Paul)
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