Up For Debate – Is Borderlands 3 the game which crumbles your Epic Games Store boycott?

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We’re still not entirely sure how Gearbox can lurch so magnificently from mega-success (Half-Life, Borderlands) to abject failure (Battleborn, Duke Nukem, Aliens: Colonial Marines) but they’ve always been a curiously unpredictable bunch. What is entirely predictable, however, is Borderlands 3’s success. At this point, the reviews barely matter. Borderlands 3 is going to fly off the shelves by the million through brand recognition alone.

If you want to get a picture of just how huge the Borderlands franchise is, think about this: 5 million Borderlands games have been sold in the past three months alone. There hasn’t even been a new Borderlands game for five years and yet, somehow, Gearbox’s old titles are still flying off the shelves.

Borderlands has morphed into a monster, and Borderlands 3 is the 80-foot giant which is going to eat almost every game in September for lunch. It’s going to end up picking Gears 5 out with a toothpick before throwing it onto the sad carcass of GreedFall. No offence to those games, we think they’ve got every chance of being great, but Borderlands is a rare gaming juggernaut.

Just to top it all off this week, with hype reaching fever pitch, some insanely talented marketing guru hooked up a deal between Borderlands and one of the biggest games on the planet – Fortnite. Bloody Claptrap is now in Fortnite. Pandora is in Fortnite. 80 million players who may have never heard of Borderlands now know exactly what Borderlands 3 is, as well as when it’s coming to the very gaming client they already play Fortnite. It’s a devilish bit of marketing that, like it or not, is surely going to prove a turning point for the Epic Games Store.

Borderlands 3 is, naturally, an Epic Store exclusive. It’s also the biggest Epic Store exclusive ever, and by some distance. The amount of cash which must’ve been thrown around to make this happen has to be obscene. Gearbox has probably made billions from Steam, so to throw all that out the window for a partnership with the most hated store since Sweeney Todd and Mrs Lovett’s pie shop is quite the move.

Which brings us around to us, or, well, you, more precisely. Borderlands 3 is coming to PC through the Epic Games Store on September 13th. There’ll be no pre-loads, you’ll be lucky if you get cloud saves, and there’ll be no community discussions, but you’ll be able to play BL3 just fine provided you hand over 60 bucks. The big question, however, is will you? Is Borderlands 3 your breaking point at which you forgo your Epic Store boycott? Are you going to hold out for Steam, or does the exclusivity deal mean you’ll never buy Borderlands 3 at all?

Last time around, you were fairly unanimous with your decision making. More than 2/3 of you said you were boycotting the Epic Store in our previous Up For Debate, and just a quarter of you said there was a game which could make you change your mind.

Get voting and remember to let us know why below!