Sometimes when you look at the twitter discussions Randy engages in , you expect him to be a indie dev working on his first game. But he has been the CEO of Gearbox for 18 years! How do you still get involved in passive agressive bitchfights over Aliens: Colonial Marines when it's clear that whatever you say regarding that topic will be damaging to your brand. I really don't understand.

You can call it a free trial, but anyone that has played f2p games recognizes this model as f2p. And that doesn't necessarily has to be a bad term. There are a lot of fun f2p games out there that capture a good amount of players. Actively getting upset about people calling it F2P seems counterproductive.

There ARE a lot of assholes on the internet, but when he uses his company as his own personal soapbox to repeatedly deceive consumers, MAAAAAYBE in a Twilight Zone-twist, HE'S the REAL asshole...

Wasted development time/money that could have gone to the game everyone actually wanted, Borderlands 3!

Randy Pitchford actively drives me away from trying Gearbox games. I know that's a dumb opinion/view to have but I can't help it.

I downloaded this to play some matches and... as far as I can tell, the only mode for you to play is versus AI with other players. There is no option to play against other players that I can find. Maybe you have to reach a certain level via vs AI matches, but it seems like you can't just jump into a real MP match. Also, the story content is not for "free trial" users.

Was Gearbox trying to cause the same game to flop spectacularly TWICE? There's people on the Steam forums who don't even know whether or not to bother with the game if it's just a "trial" as well as players complaining about the "free trial" description deterring players from bothering... They were obviously right. Then there's people like me trying to figure out how you even play online against other players to begin with. There's also people who actually own the game begging Gearbox to let the "free trial" players play the story co-op missions so they can actually find people to play the game online with in the story missions.

This is just... so weird. Why does Gearbox have to be so weird?

This is probably because they don't want new players to get crushed by veterans while they still have no idea what they're doing. I'm sure once you level a bit, you can play matches with other players. Paladins does the same thing, only it's a little less clear about it. You Tube is full of videos of people playing Paladins for the first time, and thinking that they're just naturally great at the game, or that all the other players are horrible. Meanwhile, they're just killing low skill bots. It's kind of funny.

@jesus_phish: I don't think this is an dumb or unreasonable opinion at all. More and more Randy Pitchford comes off as a pretty awful guy who constantly seems to be doing things to undermine the success of Gearbox.