Gearbox and Take-Two may be granting the wish of a 37-year-old hardcore Borderlands fan for Borderlands 4.
His name is Caleb McAlpine, and he was recently diagnosed with stage 4 terminal cancer. He asked on Reddit if there was any way he could contact Gearbox via the Borderlands 3 subreddit, as he has about 7-12 months to live (and if the chemotherapy works, he has two years at best) and would like to somehow get a chance to try out Borderlands 4 before he dies.
A few hours later, Randy Pitchford, the head of Gearbox, said on Twitter that he had been shown McAlpine’s post and was in email communication to see if there was a way to grant his request. McAlpine is now raising money for his medical treatment on GoFundMe. He is an hour away from the nearest cancer treatment center and would use the money to pay for fuel to get there, as well as the food he would consume during his strict, liquid-focused diet. The $9,000 has already raised more than $7,000 for him.
Thanks everyone who reached out to point me to this: https://t.co/g2eisJvH7F
Caleb and I are now chatting via e-mail and we’re going to do whatever we can to make something happen.
— Randy Pitchford (@DuvalMagic) October 24, 2024
Not much is officially known about Borderlands 4, as Gearbox, now part of Take-Two, announced it with a short teaser video. They’ll probably show more of the game at The Game Awards in December. In any case, Gearbox tries to respect such requests, as there have been similar examples before.
In 2019, the studio provided a unique copy of Borderlands 3 to a then 26-year-old fan who was also battling terminal cancer. In it, he was able to rename his own weapon in the game the Trevonator. And before that, in 2011, a friend of a deceased fan of the first installment asked the studio to commemorate Claptrap, a fan-favorite character from the first installment. This was done, and they named an NPC after the fan, so if you ran into Michael Mamarill in Borderlands 2, it was him.
So it’s likely that the request will be granted this time.
