Gearbox Software executive Randy Pitchford announces that he will step aside as President of Gearbox Software, the makers of the Borderlands series. Former Chief Technology Officer Steve Jones will take the helm in his place.
Randy Pitchford will remain as CEO and President of Gearbox Software's parent company, Gearbox Entertainment, and the film and TV subsidiary, Gearbox Studios. The corporate reshuffling will take Pitchford's hands off of the day-to-day video game development operations but he will remain with the company he founded and will be more focused on the newly-formed Gearbox Studios that is currently producing the Borderlands movie and other areas of the company.
Randy Pitchford posted the internal memo from the quarterly company meeting that announced the move in a tweet that describes the corporate reshuffling and his role in the company going forward. He will be "responsible for high level creative and business strategy" and accepts the responsibility as an intermediary for the various departments within Gearbox. According to him, he's taking on some of the duties that would usually go to someone in the role of "Chief Creative Officer" at other game development studios, but the role does not exist within Gearbox Entertainment LLC. The philosophy here is that he does not want to "homogenize our brands and franchises", but he will fill the role as needed. New Gearbox Studios president Steve Jones has been with the company since 1999 and served as the Chief Technology Officer since 2016. Among other roles, he served as the Technical Director on Borderlands and Borderlands 2.
Pitchford's time as the figurehead of Gearbox has seen the company become a name that carries prestige in the video game industry since he founded Gearbox Software in 1999 and has seen the company through major successes and some hardships, as most companies do. This new position he's taking will be another chapter in his long career. He now leaves the video game development side to focus on other parts of Gearbox as the company expands into TV and Film endeavors. Randy Pitchford gave a walking tour of the set of the Borderlands film production lot during their presentation slot at E3 2021. The movie wrapped principal filming a few weeks later.
Gearbox Software is currently working on Tiny Tina's Wonderlands and launches on March 25th, 2022 on PC, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.