It seems as though the Borderlands franchise still has its hardcore fanbase, with recent projects, like Project Moonshot that merged Borderlands 2 and The Pre-Sequel into one mega-game being just one example. Following that announcement, a developer known as EpicNNG on YouTube and X has revealed that his work on reviving the cancelled China-exclusive Borderlands Online has finally concluded in a functional game.
The project is the culmination of over a year of work by the developer and community members, who used a leaked build of the 2015 game, which was cancelled before it ever launched. Borderlands Online is, as of October 4, 2026, playable for free and available on the dedicated Borderlands Online site. According to the YouTube video announcing the completion of the project, getting Borderlands Online into a playable state required significant efforts, including everything from translation and restoration to UI customization.
Borderlands Online features online servers with login and account functionality, and there is an easy-to-follow set of instructions on the project website. The developer noted that Gearbox and 2K Games are aware of the game project, but have yet to take any actual legal action, but this fear of potential legal action is one of the motivations for publishing the game in a free-to-play state. The threat of legal action is also why the development team has been relatively silent after the initial boost from announcing the project's existence.
There is also an offline game mode in the event that the game project gets taken down. The original game files used to build Borderlands Online were obtained from a publicly hosted source in China, and the development team has kept as much of the original build of the game in the final version as possible, with changes being made mostly to fix UI spacing, enemy and NPC behaviors, and loading screens, since the whole game was designed for Chinese characters, which meant UI elements and loading screens had to be built from scratch to preserve visual quality.
Source: TechPowerUp News · Summarized by HeadlinesBriefing