“Time for a refund”: Borderlands 4 criticized for performance woes, no FOV option

The word “refund” is showing up a lot in Borderlands 4 threads as players complain about choppy performance and the baffling absence of a basic camera option. The launch mood has swung from excitement to frustration, with users sharing refund receipts, griping about low frame rates even on high-end rigs, and begging the developer for a simple field-of-view slider that would stop the game from feeling claustrophobic or making some players nauseous.

Across Reddit and Steam, the story is the same. Threads titled things like “Refunded” and “Time for a refund” have popped up in the Borderlands4 subreddit, with multiple players saying they asked for their money back because technical problems made the game unplayable for them. Steam and community forums are lighting up with people warning others not to buy yet, or promising they will request refunds if performance does not improve fast.

Take Skye7821 on Reddit, who bought the game with a killer setup featuring an RTX 5090 and Intel 265K. Their experience? “Just purchased the game a couple of hours ago and was really excited to play. I was able to make it past the tutorial, but would crash whenever I alt tabbed. When I went to start the game again, it would insta-crash, leading to a crash loop and not being able to start the game at all.” 

The r/Borderlands4 subreddit is packed with these stories. AceCustom1 couldn’t even get into online mode properly, finally managing to squeeze into offline play only to find the game “runs like sh*t and is stuck at 60 FPS” with massive drops during weapon swaps. This is happening on hardware that should handle the game without breaking a sweat.

The frustration isn’t limited to Reddit. Some have even taken to X to share their experience. J_Gaming89 posted their refund approval screenshot with “Woohoo, I got my refund for Borderlands 4. I wished I could enjoy the game, but man, they need to optimize it better with updates.”

Zantor shared footage of their session completely falling apart, writing “My experience with Borderlands 4 so far… Needless to say I’ve just submitted my Steam Refund.”

Even users with top-tier hardware like the RX 7900 XTX and Ryzen 7 7800X3D are reporting disappointing performance — barely hitting 80 FPS on high settings and calling it “a joke.”

Console players face FOV nightmare

Console players have their own set of problems, particularly around field of view settings. DarkoShad0w started a heated Reddit discussion about the locked 60-degree FOV causing motion sickness. “I have motion sickness both when playing in vr and games that have narrow FOV, the base FOV of borderlands 4 is 60 (or it seems 60) which is disappointing,” they wrote, frustrated by the lack of developer response on potential fixes.

In a similar thread, Extension-Pain-3284 backed the OP saying: “Idk why this is getting downvoted, people can get motion sickness! FOV sliders are important!” It’s pretty wild that in 2025, when most shooters include basic accessibility options, Borderlands 4 ships without FOV adjustments on PlayStation and Xbox — plus forced motion blur that can’t be turned off.

The complaints are everywhere on X too. RedBeard directly called out Gearbox: “hey I just got home from work and there’s NO fov slider on console for borderlands 4?? WHY, I’m used to playing at 110 fov and this feels awful. WHY!!!!!”

Chase summed up the console frustration perfectly: “Why in the year 2025 are we releasing a game on console that has no fov slider, runs below 60 fps, mediocre graphics, and FORCED MOTION BLUR?!? It actually hurts my head to play for longer than an hour.”

Here’s how Gearbox is responding

Gearbox has responded to the performance complaints by posting optimization guides and asking players to give their tweaks a fair shot. In what seems like an effort to prevent knee-jerk refunds, they’re specifically asking PC gamers to “keep playing for at least 15 minutes” after changing graphics settings to let shaders recompile and see how performance actually changes.

It’s a reasonable request, but when even an RTX 5090 struggles to hit 60 FPS at 4K — as NikTek showed in a viral clip — the underlying issues run deeper than settings adjustments can fix.

it gets double the FPS… in 1080p pic.twitter.com/AxCto96T9e

— NikTek (@NikTekOfficial) September 11, 2025

The core game still has promise

Look, underneath all these technical problems, Borderlands 4 still has that special sauce — snappy movement, ridiculous weapon variety, and the series’ trademark humor. Co-op sessions can be genuinely fun when everything’s working. But when your launch day peaks at 200K concurrent players and then quickly turns into a refund wave, that’s a problem.

Gearbox has a track record of fixing their games post-launch, so there’s hope they’ll get these issues sorted out quickly. Until then, though, a lot of vault hunters are keeping their wallets closed and waiting for Kairos to stop glitching out.

If you’re thinking about jumping in, maybe wait a bit — or add your voice to the chorus of players hoping the developers are listening.