And you thought the Borderlands movie's $90m flop was harsh: Gearbox is getting eviscerated for botching the first Risk of Rain 2 DLC it's made after buying the IP

The second Risk of Rain 2 DLC, Seekers of the Storm, is the first major update to come to the legendary roguelike since Borderlands studio Gearbox acquired the IP in November 2022. Everything looked promising: fresh stages, new and returning characters, more items, and a development team that seemed optimistic about the series' comeback after Gearbox canceled a mobile game spinoff which it spun up right after acquiring the series.

That comeback has swiftly turned into a comedown: with just 34% positive reviews on Steam two days after release, Seekers of the Storm is the worst-rated Risk of Rain anything by a big margin. Canceled mobile game aside, the series has had a sterling run up to this point, earning multiple slots on our list of the best roguelikes.

On the heels of a box office flop with the Borderlands movie, Gearbox is now getting absolutely hammered after this new DLC introduced significant bugs and issues. To put it mildly, the first Gearbox Software-developed Risk of Rain 2 DLC hasn't gone down well. To put it less mildly, even OG Risk of Rain 2 programmer Jeffrey "Ghor" Hunt is baffled by some parts of the update. 

Hunt is active in the modding scene, and was one of many Risk of Rain 2 modders to highlight technical hitches and inconsistencies that surfaced after Seekers of the Storm went live. Speaking in the Risk of Rain 2 Modding Discord server, Hunt outlined a change to how player position is registered, simply asking, "What the fuck?" A core problem, Ghor explained, is that the update has evidently messed with "one of the systems that powers almost everything in the game."

"My feeling is that development staff likely tried their best with the time they were given," Ghor added. Fellow modder iDeathHD, a core developer on the server, said it "feels like the codebase is cooked." A collection of modder-reported technical missteps is currently one of the top posts on the Risk of Rain subreddit, which is unsurprisingly having a field day with this mess. 

One of the biggest problems is a gaming classic: physics and character behavior tied to frame rate. This wasn't the case in Risk of Rain 2 before Seekers of the Storm, but in the game's official Discord server, a Gearbox representative confirmed that it's definitely a problem now. "That issue, and all the ramifications on balance/physics/attack speed/movement/etc. were not intentional," said GBX Preston, Risk of Rain brand lead Preston Weiler. "This is in our top handful of issues we're investigating."

"As a stopgap solution to the FPS-related issues, players should set their FPS to 60," Weiler advised in a separate reply. "The team is aware of the problem and is actively working on it. But for now, playing at 60 will deliver the expected behavior for most of the issues that arise from this bug." 

Weiler has been candid about the launch. "PC is in a really bad place," he admitted. "Team is cracking away at it." With Gearbox clearly aware of the reputation and expectations riding on Risk of Rain, Weiler said "we're in it for the long haul, we'll get back to a good place. Dev team just needs a sec to get everything together." 

Many of the negative Steam reviews point to bugs and other technical hitches, but a sizable portion also seem to have been stoked by regional pricing differences, with the DLC being inordinately more expensive in some countries. (Annoyingly, the Steam reviews for this DLC are seemingly broken and can't be viewed holistically for the time being.) 

In a Steam post published yesterday, August 28, Gearbox said it has "worked with our partners at Steam to adjust the pricing of Seekers of the Storm in select markets. The new pricing more closely matches prices from [DLC 1] Survivors of the Void. This change has begun and will continue to take effect over the next few hours. Those who have already purchased the content should request a refund through Steam and repurchase at the updated price once they see it has been adjusted." Affected players have been advised to refund the DLC and repurchase it at the updated price point. 

Players have also reported issues with the promised new-gen upgrade for the console version of the game. Simply put, it ain't showing up as free, so PS5 and Xbox Series X owners have been prompted to buy the game again. The official Risk of Rain Twitter, when not advising users to "try hard resetting your console" to resolve a separate reported bug which could render the game literally unbootable on console post-DLC, has assured players the upgrade "is supposed to be free" and "we're currently investigating this." That was the case as recently as August 27; I play Risk of Rain 2 on PC, so I haven't been able to verify for myself if the PS5 or Xbox Series X upgrades are now fixed, but from the state of player discussion it still seems to be a problem. 

The response to the actual content of the DLC seems more positive, though there are complaints of underwhelming items, but Seekers of the Storm has been too buried by technical hangups for that to matter very much. Gearbox has been vocal about digging its way out, which is encouraging in situations like this, but this has not been the stewardship-affirming DLC launch that everyone was hoping for.  

I've reached out to Hunt and other Risk of Rain 2 modders hoping to get some more insight into what's gone sideways here. I also contacted Gearbox for an update on its plans to fix things, and received this statement:

"We’ve been carefully monitoring player feedback related to Seekers of the Storm. We are working quickly to address that feedback, starting with yesterday’s rollout of regional pricing adjustments. We will continue to provide updates as we make progress against reported issues.”

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