Borderlands 3 is 2K's fastest ever selling game

Borderlands 3 shipped over five million copies during its first five days following launch.

This makes it the fastest selling game in the history of publisher 2K, who made the announcement today in a press release.

The frenzied shoot-and-looter (shlooter?) shipped over 50 percent more units over the same launch window than 2012's Borderlands 2 - a game that would go on to ship over 22 million. A large chunk of this came from digital sales, says 2K. More than 70 percent of consumers bought the game digitally during that first week, making Borderlands 3's digital sales the biggest ever for a cross-platform and cross-distribution release from the publisher.

Likewise, the game has been pulling in views on Twitch. Borderlands 3 has so far generated over 14 million hours of watched streaming content through the platform, which is more than half of the viewership that Borderlands 2 managed over the past seven years.

Interestingly, Borderlands 3 also had the highest pre-order sales for a 2K game to date. This was achieved in spite of the backlash that occured when 2K announced PC versions of the game would be exclusive to the Epic Games store. While the five million total hasn't been broken down by platform, Borderland 3 is now 2K's highest-selling PC game. PC game sales through the Epic store have been "incredibly strong" and exceeded expectations, according to the publisher.

The game is currently only a timed-exclusive on the Epic Games store, meaning it is likely to arrive on other PC platforms at a later date.

Borderlands 3 launched earlier this month on Xbox One, PS4, Google Stadia, and PC. Check out our review of the game which describes the new Gearbox Software release as equal parts thoughtful and sophomoric.