• Borderlands creator Randy Pitchford isn’t a fan of the negative reviews of the film adaptation of his franchise.
• The cofounder of Gearbox Software spent the weekend blocking critics and then claiming they were “accidentally” blocked.
• The Borderlands movie has a low nine percent rating from critics on Rotten Tomatoes.

Cofounder of Gearbox Software, Randy Pitchford, has never handled criticism of his creations well and in all the years of him making games, he hasn’t improved in that regard.

Last week reviews for the Borderlands movie started coming in, assumedly after embargo lifted and Pitchford must’ve been beside himself at the fact that the film achieved a nine percent critic rating on review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes.

Granted, folks haven’t exactly been kind to the movie with some really digging into their metaphor stores to describe the film.

“Borderlands is what happens when you order Guardians of the Galaxy off Temu,” Rendy Jones wrote, offering up a score of 0.5 out of five.

“I haven’t ever played the video game, which has been around for over a decade. But I have to believe it is probably more engaging than the movie Roth steers here, despite a game cast trying to make it work,” Deadline Hollywood Daily’s Pete Hammond wrote.

With these less than glowing reviews filling up Rotten Tomatoes, Pitchford did what any reasonable person would do. Sorry, we lied, he went into rabid defense mode.

Users on X took to the platform to highlight that Pitchford had blocked them. Some of these folks had dared have a negative opinion about the Borderlands movie. Mind you while some reviews were a bit nasty, thems the brakes when you’re putting content out into the world.

The Gearbox founder then decided to practice a bit of spin saying on Sunday that he had “accidentally” blocked users. Perhaps he was simply trying to mute users – which isn’t a great look either – but the idea that you could “accidentally” block more than one user isn’t plausible.

“Yesterday I blocked a bunch of truly nasty accounts, but in the process I have accidentally blocked at least three good accounts – including at least one person I like and have actually met in person! I’m so sorry! Sincerely! If I mistakenly blocked you… No excuses. Let me know if I screwed up so I can fix it. Thanks! I usually don’t block criticism. I’ve always profited from it and I’ve never been in short supply :) Cheers and be cool,” Pitchford posted on Sunday.

Except that’s not how some on the other side of Pitchford’s blocking spree see it.

Paul Tassi, a senior contributor for Forbes, reviewed the film poorly and became a target for Pitchford at the weekend.

But it got so much worse. Apparently Pitchford also blocked Ki11er Six, a long time supporter of the Borderlands series. Rather than engage with somebody that is clearly passionate about the series and find out why they didn’t enjoy the film, Pitchford just decided to block the creator. Ki11er Six has since been unblocked and seems fine about what went down.

This behaviour isn’t new but it is a different take on Pitchford’s behaviour. For example, when accused of leaving a USB drive containing sensitive Gearbox information and an adult video at a Medieval Times, Pitchford said that he intended to study a sexual act performed by an actress in the aforementioned film.

Look, we know weird is being flung around a lot these days but damn Randy, why you gotta be so weird?

He was also accused of assaulting David Eddings, the original voice of Claptrap although those accusations seemingly didn’t lead to a lawsuit.

Borderlands hasn’t had the strongest debut on the silver screen. According to Tassi, the film only managed to bring in $8.8 million. For the sake of comparison, Deadpool & Wolverine has brought in $54 million this past weekend alone and Twisters has brought in $15.4 million during the same time period.

Consensus is that the movie deviates from the Borderlands series too much and instead focuses on telling an original story, with a PG-13 rating. Pitchford has distanced himself from the production of the film putting director Eli Roth (Hostel, The Green Inferno) into the firing line of critics. Granted, Roth screwed the pooch on this one and is unlikely to escape criticism of the film entirely.

The same can be said for the cast which many have said, “phoned in” their performances.

One piece of “good” news is that Pitchford said he’s working “extra hard four you on what’s next”. Unfortunately, the last Borderlands mainline outing – Borderlands 3 – wasn’t exactly well received sitting with a user score of 5.6 on Metacritic.

We’ve not yet seen the Borderlands movie but given how poorly it has been reviewed, we’re just going to wait for it to arrive on streaming which shouldn’t be a long wait seeing as how poorly its doing.

Look, we understand. Having your creation panned by critics and viewers isn’t a good feeling. However, turning that criticism into an attack is something we’d expect from a child, not the founder of a game studio

Be better Randy.