‘Don’t send me your Borderlands theories or story ideas’ says Gearbox narrative director

Image credit: Gearbox Software (Image credit: 2K Games)

Narrative director at Gearbox Software, Sam Winkler, has reiterated to fans that he’s unable to canonize their fan theories in the Borderlands series and asked them to stop sending them to him with that intent.

In a post on Twitter / X on January 6, Winkler, who served as a writer on Borderlands 3 and lead writer on Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands, wrote: “PSA: Don’t send me your Borderlands theories or story ideas. Seriously. I will not read them. I cannot incorporate your headcanon (even if I like it myself) or ‘fix’ a story beat (even if I didn’t like it myself).

“It’s also gonna end a conversation with me real quick,” he continued. “I’m *happy* to talk about writing as a craft and a career; it’s largely why I have my [direct messages] open, but if you start with your advice on what you think I or anyone else should do with Borderlands, you’re wasting the opportunity.”

You may like

Former Destiny 2 community manager, Liana Ruppert, quoted the thread, and added: “No, really, don’t do this. Had countless [conversations] with the narrative team over at Bungo [sic] on this. It’s especially awkward (and murky) if someone suggests something that was already planned and then there’s a sense of external ownership even though that beat was already in-progress.”

Back to Winkler, and despite his plea to fans to stop sending things to him “with the intent to either canonize them or affect my work,” he added that he loves that people have those ideas and theories in the first place. “Lord knows I had mine back when I [was] solely a fan outside of Gearbox,” he said.

It’s been a while since we got a new main-series Borderlands game, given that Borderlands 3 was released in 2019. This year, however, fans can look forward to the release of the Borderlands movie, which is set to launch on August 9.

Looking for more fantastic game recommendations? Look no further than our recommendations for the best PS5 games, best Xbox Series X games, and best Nintendo Switch games.

Catherine is a News Writer for TechRadar Gaming. Armed with a journalism degree from The University of Sheffield, she was sucked into the games media industry after spending far too much time on her university newspaper writing about Pokémon and cool indie games, and realising that was a very cool job, actually. She previously spent 19 months working at GAMINGbible as a full-time journalist. She loves all things Nintendo, and will never stop talking about Xenoblade Chronicles.