The Borderlands movie has been a commercial and critical disappointment since its release last week, but as a possible side effect, there has been a spike in interest in video games. Likely driven by moviegoers eager to experience the original material, Borderlands 3 has seen a moderate increase in users and has reached its highest concurrent player count on Steam since February 2023. According to SteamDB, the game recently peaked at 12,379 players, which is a big increase from previous months.
Borderlands 2 also saw better results (recently peaking at 7,938 Steam players), and while that number isn't nearly as high, the original Borderlands and Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel games also saw increased activity. As mentioned above, this is only for the Steam version of the Borderlands games, so the final results are likely even higher when you factor in users from the Epic Games Store, Nintendo Switch, Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, PS5, and PS4.
Interestingly, Gearbox added a new feature to Borderlands 3 that allows you to skip the entire main campaign with a new character, provided you have a max-level character and have completed the campaign once.
This lets you jump straight into Borderlands 3's endgame with a new max-level character, and is a welcome quality-of-life update considering it can take dozens of hours to max out a single Vault Hunter in the game. If you wanted to try out other characters but were put off by the idea of repeating the polarizing campaign – which probably feels much better compared to the movie's story – this is a good option to help ease you back into the action.
On GameSpot, our review of the Borderlands movie gave it a 2/10, calling it a “mundane” and “disposable” experience. Other critics have been much harsher, with some describing Borderlands as a “dismal failure” and “generic.”