As good as Borderlands 3 sells, it rumbles behind the scenes. The reason: the bonus payments to the employees are apparently significantly lower than hoped.
<a href = "https://img.gameswelt.de/public/images/201908/fbef13fada01025b39c54b5ade5b0c08.jpg" data-title = "Borderlands 3 picture 1
Date: 08/19/2019 "data-lightbox =" fbef13fada01025b39c54b5ade5b0c08.jpg ">
Actually, the model doesn't sound that bad. Gearbox employees appear to receive salaries below the industry average, but receive portions of the game’s earnings as quarterly bonuses, with 40 percent distributed to employees while 60 percent goes to the company. This has worked well so far, but with Borderlands 3, these payments appear to be significantly lower than employees had hoped for. According to anonymous employees, six-figure bonus payments were in part promised, but significantly less coal arrives.
Studio boss Randy Pitchford is said to have communicated this internally yesterday, and this caused a lot of displeasure. Reasons are said to be higher costs than originally planned, partly due to the additional staff in the studio, and partly due to higher costs due to the change from Unreal Engine 3 to 4. According to reports, the development costs advanced by 2K of around 140 million would have to be paid US dollars (including DLCs) will be repaid. The fact that there are bonus payments at all means that Borderlands makes 3 wins, but much less than expected.
This certainly does not make for joy, although Pitchford apparently takes it easy. According to him, dissatisfied employees are free to quit. The fact that Pitchford is said to receive an eight-figure bonus while the employees go home with less than hoped for does not cause much enthusiasm either. Some employees allegedly told Kotaku that there could be numerous layoffs on the part of the employees, even though Gearbox had now given the employees revised forecasts.