In the case of
Borderlands 3, which comes out Friday for PC and consoles, things are unusual. Rather than sending out codes for the game, 2K gave reviewers special Epic Games Store accounts loaded up with early, work-in-progress builds of
Borderlands 3—a bizarre scenario that we've never seen before
. As
Polygon explained in
their review:
2K Games and Gearbox didn't send out review codes for Borderlands 3. Instead, they set reviewers up with new Epic Games Store accounts with the game unlocked, and gave us a few warnings about the game being a work in progress. They asked us to stay away from the DirectX 12 implementation, for example, and told us that our progress in these builds may or may not carry over to the final game.
As a result,
Polygon reviewer Ben Kuchera wrote, he and some of his colleagues ran into some severe technical issues including random crashes and, in one case, someone losing six hours of progress and having to start from scratch (!!!!). Some other reviewers complained of technical problems;
others did not.