By Have you ever wanted to like a game so badly that you hop on social media and blast anyone who dares to question whether your favorite game will have severe performance issues at launch? Have you so convinced yourself that something will be good, before having even tried it, that any negative news, like a Polygon writer saying a trailer looked boring, drives you to go on Reddit post rampages where you dig up every stupid comment or review the publication has made, and along with the rest of the mob you don your pitchforks, your spiked clubs, and your balaclavas and go to work eviscerating the messenger.
The social media outrage that Polygon’s critique of Borderlands 3 sparked is one of those situations so rich with irony that you can’t help but shake your head. The villains in Borderlands 3 weaponize social media to get their followers to carry out their murderous intentions. And because gamers took issue with the Polygon review and their statement saying the trailer looked boring, we have a social media mob positively churning with outrage. One post with over 200 upvotes featured a representation of Polygon’s offices set on fire. Borderlands has always been an over-the-top farcical satirization of most traditional role-playing games. When I comb through comments in the Borderlands 3 subreddit, I wonder if the developers haven’t decided to pivot into realistic social commentary. Or perhaps they know their audience a little too well.
There are severe performance issues with Borderlands 3 that don’t seem to be unique to my computer configuration. The much maligned Polygon review talks at length about them. When I enabled the DirectX 12 setting in the graphics options, my game wouldn’t boot until I deleted the configuration file. I also get hitching and stuttering when I aim down the scope of my gun. The stuttering was annoying enough that I decided to take a break and wait for a hotfix or a workaround:
