Together with the announcement of Borderlands 3, Gearbox recently announced a host of incentives to get players to return to their older titles. The release of Borderlands: Game of the Year edition is the most obvious, but the studio also released a free remastered texture pack for Borderlands: The Handsome Collection. It seems to have worked, too; the older Borderlands titles have all seen a sharp increase in players on Steam in recent weeks.
Borderlands Game of the Year Edition and Older Titles See Huge Boosts on Steam
In the wake of Gearbox’s Borderlands 3 announcement, it seems that a lot of fans have gone back to revisit the older Borderlands games or their remasters. Steam Charts shows that Borderlands 2’s average player count has increased by 89.25% in the last 30 days. It even reached a peak concurrent player count of 59,333! Meanwhile, Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel saw even greater percentage growth of 101.46%, though its audience does remain smaller; the title’s concurrent player peak reached 12,065 people.
The Borderlands: Game of the Year edition only saw a 24% increase. However, it is a new release, so that’s not unexpected. Borderlands 2 seems to be the game which most fans are returning to; so much so that the title has even claimed the #13 most-played game spot on Steam. As a result, it’s overtaken plenty of more recent big releases and even major popular titles like Rocket League.
Borderlands 2 has always been an enduring title, especially on Steam. Nevertheless, this recent resurgence is significant. Certainly, it suggests that there will be a large audience for Borderlands 3, despite its 6-month exclusivity to the Epic Games Store. Although there was recently review-bombing on all of the older Borderlands titles by disgruntled Steam users, there was also an effective counter-review-bombing; many Steam users responded by leaving positive reviews in an intentional attempt to counter the reactionary protest. Indeed, Epic has said that around 40% of their users also have Steam accounts; suggesting that a lot of PC gamers don’t see a reason to stick to only one platform.