Borderlands 3 sells more than 5 million units in 5 days

Numbers first: more than 5 million copies in five days. That was the tally 2K released on September 23, 2019 for Borderlands 3, which launched ten days earlier, on September 13, for PlayStation 4, Xbox One and PC. According to the publisher, performance was 50% higher than Borderlands 2 over the same period, and the game became 2K’s best PC launch considering the first five days.

In practice, the PC figure was the most curious. The computer version was available only on the Epic Games Store, under a six-month exclusivity deal that irritated some players used to Steam. Even so, 2K reported that Borderlands 3 was the game with the most pre-orders on Epic’s store up to that point. Another relevant number: 70% of the units sold were digital.

With that start, the Borderlands series passed US$1 billion in revenue, the second 2K franchise to reach the mark. The game, developed by Gearbox Software on Unreal Engine 4, is the fourth entry in the main series and the sequel to 2012’s Borderlands 2.

What came next

The curve kept rising: according to Take-Two, Borderlands 3 passed 8 million copies by the end of 2019, 15 million in May 2022 and more than 18 million in 2023. The Epic exclusivity ended in March 2020, when the game came to Steam. Documents from the Epic Games v. Apple case later showed that Epic paid 2K US$146 million for the deal. Translated from the jargon: the exclusivity cost Epic dearly.

The game got Xbox Series X|S versions on November 10, 2020 and PlayStation 5 on November 12, 2020, with a free upgrade, split-screen for up to four players and up to 60 frames per second in 4K. The Nintendo Switch version came out on October 6, 2023, and the sequel, Borderlands 4, was released on September 12, 2025.

Source: 2K, via Eurogamer.