According to Pitchford in an interview with Gamasutra, ”I’m actually astonished that we’re about to launch a sequel and no one’s stole it from us. The formula’s right there. No one’s stolen it yet. That’s weird. We’re in an industry where people do nothing but steal from each other. That’s kind of interesting, isn’t it? Not that I want anyone to steal it, or I’m challenging people to steal it.”
Pitchford went on to admit that Borderlands was specifically designed to avoid competition with shooters like Battlefield and Call of Duty, going with a different take on first person shooters.
”Why let our brains get beat in and put so much energy, when we’re not even sure we can beat the best boxer? We can create new sports, or we can win some other sport,” Pitchford related. ”If you’re the only ones that do something that people find as valuable? You don’t have to worry about competition. Like, Borderlands has zero competition. It doesn’t have to worry about that at all.”
Pitchford reminisced about having to market the original Borderlands in 2009, trying to both gain attention to the new IP while trying to avoid revealing its design to avoid copycats. He admitted, “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, ‘Shit, we don’t want to tell people our secret because then they’re all gonna copy it because it’s so good.’”
It seems his fears were unfounded, as the Diablo-style first person shooter is still effectively a genre of just one IP.
