Borderlands 3 is now free on the Epic Game Store and will be available for precisely zero pence until 5/26/2022 at 4:00pm. If you wish to get your sweaty paws on a copy then you will need to have an account on the Epic Game Store and then tickle this link.
Epic Games splashed a huge $145 million to secure Borderlands 3 as a six month timed exclusive for the Epic Games Store in 2019, but still managed to turn a profit on the deal, it has been revealed through leaked documents from the Epic Games vs. Apple court case.
The “fully loaded” deal, as Epic describe it included a combination of a one-off fee of $20 million, a marketing commitment for $15 million and a minimum guarantee for $80 million in game sales revenue. That might seem like a huge amount of money to drop, it worked out for Epic, as they recouped the $80 million investment in two weeks (it actually made $100 million). Epic made $9.2 million thanks to their 12% cut on game sales in those first two weeks (some were made through retail and resellers), so the one-off fee and marketing commitment took a while longer for Epic to fully clear, but came with the value of securing more users for the EGS.
The game had a wide range of review scores, lots of nines but a fair few lower scores as well, including a 6/10 from us.
“I’ve got very mixed feelings about Borderlands 3,” said Jason in our review. “Overall I like it and it’s fun to play, but it could have been so much more and the writing feels like time traveling back to your high school days and being surprised and a little disappointed at how immature everyone is. Few things in life are as embarrassing as the person you were five years ago. If you’re not embarrassed, then I’m sorry to say that you may well be the Borderlands 3 of your friend group; stuck in the past unable to grow or change in any meaningful way, relying on fart jokes as a stand-in for your personality.”
Source: EGS