Google Stadia’s version of Borderlands 3 is out of date by several months.
Yesterday, Borderlands 3 launched on Google Stadia, Google’s new game streaming service. Stadia allows you to play games on your Chromecast or Chrome browser without actually owning a high-end gaming PC or a home console. You just log in to Stadia and play whatever games you want. There’s no installation, no updates, and no discs to insert.
However, Stadia requires a high-speed and stable internet connection to work correctly. If your internet cuts out or you lose connection, your game stops. Also, because it requires a high-speed connection, any plans with a data cap or limited speeds will find Stadia to be strictly worse than regular consoles.
There’s also another problem with Stadia, at least, if you want to play Borderlands: it’s almost two months out of date.
According to Gearbox, the version of Borderlands 3 running on Stadia is actually from October 24th. That means it hasn’t had any of the hotfixes or patches that launched since then, and it’s missing quite a few quality-of-life changes like rebalanced loot pools for bosses and an increases bank inventory. It’s also missing content like the Takedown at the Maliwan Blacksite, as well as Mayhem 4 difficulty.
Gearbox also said that the Stadia version of Borderlands 3 won’t get the new DLC, Moxxi’s Heist of the Handsome Jackpot, until early 2020. Regular console and PC players will get that DLC tomorrow.
A Reddit thread dedicated to Borderlands 3 on Stadia suggests that this older version was used to make it easier for Gearbox to optimize the game for Stadia, as well as to hit a launch date of 2019. Players report that while you can play the game at 4K with the right equipment and a good internet connection, the framerate is still lackluster compared to the console and PC versions.
Borderlands 3 on Stadia is expected to reach parity with the console version sometime in early 2020. In the meantime, you’ll have to wait for all that juicy content that everyone else gets first.
Source: Gearbox, Reddit
