It looks like someone might have tweeted the release date for Borderlands 3 from the official Borderlands account a little early. The swiftly deleted tweet stated that “mayhem is coming September 13. Pre-order now for the gold weapon skin pack.” Coming from the official account, this is likely to be a legitimate release date, though obviously nothing is set in stone until an official announcement. Or at least one that stays on the internet for more than ten minutes.
In addition to that, it seems a video advert for the game has also leaked, revealing that the game might be exclusive to the Epic Games Store. This is becoming a more and more common thing and an increasingly contentious issue in the gaming community. The advert, found by Twitter user Wario64 shows the Epic Games Store logo, with no sign of the Steam logo. Again, not a foregone conclusion until official announcements are made, but this gives a strong indication that the PC version of Borderlands 3 will be foregoing the Steam storefront.
Further fuel was added to this when Randy Pitchford, CEO of Borderlands developer Gearbox Software, tweeted in response to the inevitable backlash. While he states that, ultimately, these decisions are made by the publisher (in this case 2K/Take Two) rather than the developer, he sees no problem with store exclusivity as long as it can bring advantages and doesn’t last too long. Either he’s mitigating damage, or he’s just speaking sense. Possibly both.
Pitchford also confirms that Gearbox is focused on creating a cross-platform game with Borderlands 3, which hopefully means we’ll all be playing together, no matter what storefront we purchase from.