Borderlands 4: C4SH’s Sleight of Hand Tricks Can’t Make The Game’s PC Performance Woes Go Away
At Tokyo Game Show 2025, Gearbox Software held a Special Stage Event where it gave viewers a first look at C4SH, the first-ever DLC Vault Hunter for Borderlands 4. C4SH is a drifter who, after working as a dealer-bot at an unnamed casino, decides to quit his job to search for some cursed eldritch artifacts located somewhere in Kairos. Unlike most of the other robots in the Borderlands series, C4SH has a unique personality of his own, and his playstyle revolves entirely around the concept of chance. According to Gearbox CEO Randy Pitchford, in fact, he can be either the best or worst Vault Hunter in Borderlands 4, depending on players’ luck.
Gearbox hasn’t provided many specific details about C4SH’s kit, but it did confirm during the Stage Event that he will have three Action Skills to choose from, all of which will come with their own separate skill trees. Although the effects of C4Sh’s Skills are unpredictable, they can apparently lead to good fortunes when they work as intended. With his sleight-of-hand tricks, C4SH can not only buff himself and his allies, but he can also unleash powerful attacks and consume the strength of his enemies, among other things.
C4SH’s Action Skills can make him throw cards at enemies, roll dice, and spin bullets in chambers, according to Gearbox.
C4SH will be added to Borderlands 4 as part of a DLC pack called Mad Ellie and the Vault of the Damned, which will come out in Q1 2026. Although it seems like he will be a genuinely refreshing addition to Borderlands 4‘s current lineup of Vault Hunters, no amount of luck will give him the ability to fix the game’s biggest issue: performance problems.
Borderlands 4's New DLC Vault Hunter Looks Nice, But the Game is Still Suffering from Performance Issues
As anyone who’s been in tune with Borderlands 4 would know, the game doesn’t exactly run that well on most platforms, especially PC. Despite getting generally positive reviews from critics, Borderlands 4 has a mixed user rating on Steam, in large part due to the frequent stuttering, crashing, and frame-rate problems that many have experienced when playing the game, even on high-end devices. Although Borderlands 4 isn’t a completely unplayable game, like Cyberpunk 2077 was on last-gen consoles when it first launched, the game’s technical state is not even remotely close to what players would want from a full-fledged AAA release like this.
Randy Pitchford's Controversial Comments Have Made the Discourse Around BL4's Technical State Even Worse
Borderlands 4‘s PC woes have been further exasperated by some of the comments that Randy Pitchford has made on social media since the game’s launch. After gaining the ire of the Borderlands community a few months ago for saying that “real fans” would buy Borderlands 4 regardless of its price, Pitchford recently caused some controversy again when he argued with players about the game’s performance problems.
In response to a Twitter user who claimed that Borderlands 4 “plays poorly,” even with his “best setup,” Pitchford said that the person should “please get a refund from Steam” if he wasn’t happy with it. A day before this, Pitchford made another post on Twitter where he stated that PC gamers “must accept the reality of the relationship between their hardware and what the software they are running is doing.” Many fans took this to mean that Pitchford was implying the cause of Borderlands 4‘s technical problems lay not with the game itself, but with the hardware that gamers were running it on. These statements, along with some of Pitchford’s other comments, have unsurprisingly angered a lot of PC gamers on social media.
Gearbox May Have Announced C4SH At the Wrong Time
Given how Borderlands 4‘s performance issues aren’t even close to being fixed yet, announcing C4SH —a Vault Hunter who’s exclusive to a paid DLC for the game — right now,kind of feels like a tone-deaf decision on Gearbox’s end. While there’s nothing necessarily wrong with the company locking content behind a DLC, some PC players are understandably hesitant to spend more money on the game, due to the poor technical state that it’s currently in. If Gearbox irons out most of Borderlands 4‘s issues before C4SH is added to the game in early 2026, then maybe more gamers will be willing to shell out some extra cash for him.
