{"id":550604,"date":"2026-03-28T14:57:08","date_gmt":"2026-03-28T14:57:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/550604\/"},"modified":"2026-03-28T14:57:08","modified_gmt":"2026-03-28T14:57:08","slug":"borderlands-4s-new-30-expansion-pack-isnt-winning-over-fans","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/550604\/","title":{"rendered":"Borderlands 4’s New $30 Expansion Pack Isn’t Winning Over Fans"},"content":{"rendered":"

Borderlands 4<\/a> has struggled to get a foothold with players in the same way Borderlands 2 or even its lesser-loved sequel did years ago. The looter shooter\u2019s first big expansion since launching last year, Mad Ellie and the Vault of the Damned, is meant to bring people back. But some fans aren\u2019t happy that they have to shell out $30, nearly half the cost of the full game, to play it.<\/p>\n

On March 26, Gearbox and 2K released the first of two large DLC expansions for <\/a>Borderlands 4<\/a>. This first \u201cStory Pack\u201d includes content like a fresh region to explore, plenty of new guns to loot, and a new playable Vault Hunter: C4SH, a \u201cCasinoBot\u201d given a new lease on life after winning big and finding a magical deck of cards that gives him powerful abilities.<\/p>\n

This all sounds great, and as someone who enjoyed Borderlands 4 last year, I\u2019m excited to hop back in and check out Mad Ellie and the Vault of the Damned. But players online who have hopped in already are reporting that the DLC\u2019s main questline can be completed in about two to three hours, which does seem short. Gearbox itself has also explained that the new region is only a fraction of the size of the main game\u2019s opening area, so it won\u2019t be a place you can explore for a dozen hours like the main game\u2019s big open world. For some, this all seems like too little for the DLC\u2019s $30 price tag.<\/p>\n

Over on Reddit, there\u2019s a lot of discussion as to whether this new expansion is worth the price. While some have praised what\u2019s here and the expansion\u2019s creepy, spooky atmosphere, others don\u2019t like the idea of paying nearly half the price of Borderlands 4 and getting one small new region, a few missions, some new guns, and one new playable character. The new DLC also has a \u201cMixed\u201d rating on Steam<\/a>, which goes along with the main game\u2019s \u201cMixed\u201d rating. On PSN, the DLC has a higher 4.3 out of 5 rating<\/a>. On SteamDB,<\/a> Borderlands 4 has more active players than it has seen in months, but still far shy of the 300k at launch.<\/p>\n

According to the expansion\u2019s lead game designer Josh Jeffcoat, the whole point of this new DLC is to offer players a new adventure, and he\u2019s less concerned about endgame grinding and loot farming.\u00a0 \u201cIt\u2019s very, very specifically for speaking to those customers that want that adventure,\u201d Jeffcoat told IGN. <\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cAnd so I loved being able to build it, and I hope people love it. I love that we got to play around with horror this time. That\u2019s actually something that we don\u2019t touch on very much\u2026So we\u2019re trying new things, new ways of exploring the world around you. I was really glad that we got real swimming in the DLC finally, because it was important to me to be able to explore worlds in a new way. And we have very limited swimming in the main game, but we have, like, entire underwater areas that you can explore and go find secrets in now. So, come back for the adventure! That\u2019s why I built this, because I want to give people that opportunity to tell a story and go see a new place and have fun in it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Borderlands and its history of DLC pricing <\/p>\n

Historically speaking, the new DLC\u2019s price isn\u2019t that far off from those of previous Borderlands add-ons<\/a>. Post-launch expansions in Borderlands 2 cost $10 a pop and included around two to four hours of content, depending on how fast you moved and how much side stuff you engaged with during a playthrough. Borderlands 2 also sold DLC Vault Hunters for $10 each<\/a>. Meanwhile, Borderlands 3 and its DLC expansions cost $15 each and were comparable in size to what was on offer in Borderlands 2. The third game never got DLC characters. Doing some quick math, buying a character and a DLC expansion in Borderlands 2 would have cost you around $20.<\/p>\n

In Borderlands 4 in 2026, you don\u2019t have an option to buy the new Vault Hunter separately. So it\u2019s $30 for an expansion and character, which is more, but not outrageously more. Still, a lot has changed since Borderlands 2 launched in 2012. Games today are expected to expand and update over time, often for free. And I think this has made it harder to convince people to spend any amount of money for a post-launch DLC, much less one that costs nearly half the asking price of the full game.<\/p>\n

If you are interested in playing\u00a0Borderlands 4\u2018s Mad Ellie and the Vault of the Damned expansion pack and suspect you\u2019ll want to play the other story DLC, too, then it might be worth buying the Vault Hunter Pack for $50. This includes access to both story packs and the two new playable characters, once launched, for $10 less than buying them separately.<\/p>\n

Will this new $30 expansion be enough to bring back people who fell off Borderlands 4 last year? I\u2019m not sure. But it seems Gearbox is hopeful.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s definitely a good reason to come back,\u201d said Jeffcoat. \u201cIt\u2019s a brand new area of the game. It\u2019s all new content, plus with the new Vault Hunter. If you were looking for a different style of gameplay, you can start the DLC directly with a new Vault Hunter right away. You don\u2019t have to go level anybody up or play through any of the mainline missions, if you didn\u2019t want to have to deal with doing that. You\u2019re more than welcome to.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Borderlands 4 has struggled to get a foothold with players in the same way Borderlands 2 or even…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":550605,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[78398,42959,98531,245003,8617,74],"class_list":["post-550604","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-technology","tag-borderlands-4","tag-dlc","tag-gearbox","tag-mad-ellie-and-the-vault-of-the-damned","tag-price","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/550604","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=550604"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/550604\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/550605"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=550604"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=550604"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=550604"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}