The developer of Borderlands 4, Gearbox, is literally asking PC gamers to stand around and wait up to 15 minutes of gameplay for shaders to compile in the background to fix stuttering issues. This latest bit of news comes after a recent update that was supposed to improve performance on PC, but instead caused an increase in stuttering for some players.
It’s honestly mind-boggling that the solution to performance issues is to basically force a very long, secret loading screen while you’re already in the game world. This is probably one of the most embarassing things for a developer to ask players.
Borderlands 4 Needs You to Wait Around for Invisible Loading Screens
Look, if you’ve been following the game, you already know that Borderlands 4 has been struggling with PC performance since its launch. Most of the negative reviews on Steam have been all about the stuttering and technical problems on PC. Even the tech experts at Digital Foundry noticed significant stutter problems and actually advised against even running the game on the ‘Badass’ graphics setting. This latest September 25 update was supposed to be a fix, but for some players, it just made things worse.
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Gearbox’s official response to the increased stuttering is to tell players to simply give the game 15 minutes of gameplay to continue compiling shaders. The theory is that this will resolve the stuttering issues after the compilation is complete. If the fifteen minutes of waiting don’t work, Gearbox suggests manually clearing your shader cache through your video card manufacturer’s official method. It’s awful for anyone who just wants to jump in and play a smooth game.
As anyone who has played Borderlands 4 on PC knows, when you first boot up the game, you already have to wait for shaders to compile before you even get into the virtual world. The current running theory is that this initial compilation process just doesn’t catch all the shader compilation that needs to be done later on during gameplay. This oversight is what causes the constant stuttering when new elements pop up.
What’s even weirder is that Gearbox has issued similar advice before. They previously told players on Steam that anytime you change any of your graphics settings, the shaders will need to recompile, and you should “keep playing for at least 15 minutes to see how your PC’s performance has changed”. This newest piece of advice is essentially the same, making it sound like an effort to prevent players from having knee-jerk reactions to the game’s poor performance as soon as they change their settings.
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To be fair, the game is getting better overall, and the fact that Gearbox is still trying to improve things is a good sign. However, the idea that players should have to force the game to compile shaders by traveling to specific zones before moving on to what they actually want to do is absolutely wild. We’re talking about a game that, right now, wants you to go into an area and just wait for 15 minutes.
That feels like night and day compared to the smooth, fast experience that a top-tier PC game should deliver. Hopefully, Gearbox can get a proper fix out soon, because having your players stand around to get their game to run right is never a good look.
