14 DAY TRIAL // Randy Pitchford, the president of Gearbox Software, is quite surprised that his studio’s most popular franchise, Borderlands, hasn’t been cloned or at least copied in some way by nefarious individuals.
Borderlands 2 is out this September and promises to build upon its quite successful predecessor, which came out back in 2010 on the PC, PS3, and Xbox 360 and impressed many with a tight combination of first-person shooter gameplay and RPG mechanics.
Given the popularity of Borderlands, Gearbox President Randy Pitchford is quite surprised that other, more nefarious developers have yet to copy the gameplay from the title.
"We're in an industry where people do nothing but steal from each other," Pitchford told Gamasutra. "I'm actually astonished that we're about to launch a sequel and no one's stole it from us. The formula's right there. No one's stolen it yet. That's weird."
Of course, Pitchford doesn’t want his statement to be presented as a challenge, quickly adding that, "Not that I want anyone to steal it, or I'm challenging people to steal it."
This fear of theft also made promoting the original Borderlands a hard thing, as Gearbox wanted to show off the game’s various features but not in a way that would have helped those who were trying to copy it.
"When talking about Borderlands 1, it was really confusing, because on one hand we got to scream from the highest mountain to get attention because it's a new IP. On the other hand, it's like, 'We don't want to tell people our secret because then they're all going to copy it because it's so good.'"
Borderlands 2 is set to make the franchise even more popular by introducing plenty of new things, so the possibility of cloning will no doubt increase. Hopefully, Gearbox will be able to show fans just how great the original experience is.