Borderlands 4 developer Gearbox has released the first meaningful update for the looter shooter that it said improves stability and “smooths out” progression — but there are no balance changes yet.
“This update improves stability on PC, smooths out progression, and updates the Gilded Glory Pack loot and rewards for a more seamless experience,” Gearbox said in a post on the 2K Borderlands website alongside the patch notes, below. “Please restart your game to ensure that the update goes through and to prevent connection errors in matchmaking.”
Meanwhile, Gearbox said Borderlands 4 will see weekly minor updates. These involve changes to which Weekly Big Encore Boss and Wildcard Mission is live. Maurice’s Black Market Vending Machine is also on the move. The Weekly Big Encore Boss is a tougher variant of an existing boss with an even more rewarding loot pool. Weekly Wildcard Missions add challenging new traits to an existing mission. These missions feature a guaranteed Legendary drop that you can repeatedly earn to get your ideal roll.
And here’s the official blurb on Maurice’s Black Market Vending Machine:
Go in search of where the Black Market Vending Machine has moved to and discover what’s available in your game every week. Remember, while the location is the same, your vending machine items are different from other players, so ask around to see if someone has the item you’re looking for!
Borderlands 4 is currently on a mixed Steam review rating, with most of the negative comments revolving around PC performance. The tech experts at Digital Foundry have said their initial analysis of Borderlands 4 on PC shows significant stutter problems, and have advised against running the game on its ‘Badass’ graphics setting, which suggests there are indeed problems with the Unreal Engine 5 title. From the look of the patch notes, the focus here is on crashes, rather than performance issues. Gearbox recently said PC performance problems were its “top priority,” so hopefully more to come on that front soon.
In the meantime, Gearbox has posted a Borderlands 4 Nvidia Optimization guide on Steam, advising players how to optimize their graphics settings for “better performance and framerates” on PC with the Nvidia app, although users report mixed results.
Gearbox has also issued a piece of advice to PC gamers that to me reads like an effort to prevent players from making knee-jerk reactions to the game’s performance as soon as they’ve changed their settings: “Please note that any time you change any of your graphics settings, your shaders will need to recompile. Please keep playing for at least 15 minutes to see how your PC’s performance has changed.”
Borderlands 4: All Vault Hunter Skill Trees Ranked
Borderlands 4: All Vault Hunter Skill Trees Ranked
While this patch mentions the PC version, there’s no word on improvements to the performance of Borderlands 4 on console. Console players have reported performance getting worse the longer they play, suggesting Borderlands 4 suffers from a memory leak issue. Gearbox development chief Randy Pitchford has said Gearbox is looking into this one on PS5 Pro specifically, but it doesn’t look like a fix is in place just yet.
And there are no balance changes yet, which means those overpowered builds of yours are safe… for now.
Borderlands 4 September 18, 2025 update patch notes:
Stability
- Addressed crashes tied to animation states, audio, and collision checks
- Addressed various GPU-related crashes
Gameplay & Progression
- Resolved an issue where the Reward Center could stop working after claiming the Gilded Glory Pack rewards
- Addressed a progression blocker in the mission “Talk to Zadra,” where the objective could fail if players exited and relaunched mid-dialogue
- Corrected “Doesn’t own DLC” warnings incorrectly showing up on non-DLC gear
- This will be fixed on consoles in the coming days.
Loot & Items
- Updated loot pools so Gilded Glory Pack guns no longer appear in standard chests
Wesley is Director, News at IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at [email protected] or confidentially at [email protected].
