Borderlands 3’s Steam popularity surges after Borderlands movie flop

Sounds like Take-Two was right not to worry

Gearbox/Take-Two

The Borderlands film might have been a flop of a video game movie – we even called it a disservice to other, good adaptations – but on the bright side for Gearbox and publisher Take-Two, Borderlands 3 on Steam is much more popular now. The FPS game might be half a decade old, but it landed in the top 10 list on Steam’s best-selling games charts.

At the time of publication, as GamesRadar first noticed, Borderlands 3 is Steam’s eighth best-selling game, beating out God of War’s PC port and even Baldur’s Gate 3, which is still in the top 15 over a year after launch. The Steam Deck is the top seller, which kind of doesn’t count since it’s not a game, followed by the free-to-play Counter-Strike 2 and The First Descendant, then Warhammer 40k: Space Marine 2 and Call of Duty: Black Ops 6.  

Borderlands 3 also has as many concurrent players as it did in the months following its 2019 launch. Borderlands 3 usually has about 6,000 players or so, give or take a few hundred, though it often drops to somewhere between 2,000 and 3,000, which is where the concurrent player count sat before the Borderlands movie released. After launch day, it jumped up to 5,000 and hit a peak of 12,231 on August 11 before settling in at 9,500 – a solid number, for a Monday at the start of school.

Maybe that renewed interest in Borderlands is why Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick wasn’t too concerned about the Borderlands movie’s atrocious critical reception – though he still wants you to see the film. Please.