Gearbox boss “astonished” that Borderlands hasn’t been cloned (yet)

Why hasn’t anybody ripped off Borderlands? With the launch of a sequel just two months out, this is the big question keeping Gearbox boss Randy Pitchford up at night.

Talking to Gamasutra, Pitchford said he was “astonished” that no other developer had cloned the game yet considering that everybody clones everybody else and that’s just how it works.

“We’re in an industry where people do nothing but steal from each other. I’m actually astonished that we’re about to launch a sequel and no one’s stole it from us,” he said. “The formula’s right there. No one’s stolen it yet. That’s weird. Not that I want anyone to steal it, or I’m challenging people to steal it.”

He added that promoting the first game had been pretty hard because they didn’t want to give too much of their ~~Diablo-with-guns game~~ idea away.

“When talking about Borderlands 1, it was really confusing, because on one hand we gotta scream from the highest mountain to get attention because it’s a new IP. On the other hand, it’s like, ‘Sh**, we don’t want to tell people our secret because then they’re all gonna copy it because it’s so good,’” he said.

Borderlands 2 is out in September, but in the meantime, you can play Dead Island. It’s basically Borderlands with zombies on a beach. I guess Randy hasn’t played it yet, huh?

If you’re zombie-beached out, check out all of our Borderlands 2 stuff. It’s totally good.