Renaming BorderlandsGOTY.exe to Launcher makes the game run although it seems unstable.
steam-729040.log

After some more testing it seems that the game is quite stable although tabbing out causing some issues. Firstly it changes the resolution. This means you need to reset the resolution every time to tab out and back in. Secondly there is a chance for your game to crash if you tab out at least for me.

Works 100% here after renaming the executable as you recommended TheSilentLink

Ubuntu 18.04, Mesa 19.0.1 Kernel 5.0.4 and ATI RX480 60FPS Solid

Only issue is that it removed the old edition and with it my old savegames, fortunately I've got a copy on another computer...

Only issue is that it removed the old edition and with it my old savegames, fortunately I've got a copy on another computer...

That's weird, considering that Borderlands GOTY ENHANCED is a different game entry in the library with a different gameID, 729040. The original Borderlands GOTY is 8980.. You will have two different compatdata folders.

This reminds me the event of Bioshock and Bioshock Remastered...
I hope They don't mess up again.

I also got it running by using TheSIlentLink's suggestion, but there's constant suttering. Nvidia proprietary driver 418.56-2, Nvidia GTX 1070. Proton 4.2-2.

There's an option in-game to "disable launcher" - I don't have time now, but someone could try this option, and then restore the renamed files to their original names. Might avoid validation problems, or running afoul of updates.

Having got this running as above, I'm running into situations where the game appears frozen. The display will stop drawing, but the music continues. I can alt-tab out and it seems to require a kill -9 to stop the thing. It's not clear if input is being handled. So far I've had it last up to about 5 minutes before freezing, but mostly it seems to be freezing before hitting the menu. When I did get into the game it seemed to work well.

Proton 4.2-2
Device: Radeon RX 580 Series (POLARIS10, DRM 3.27.0, 4.20.16-200.fc29.x86_64, LLVM 7.0.1)

[edited the proton version]

Further testing with renamed game executable, under:

GPU: RX 480 8GB
Driver/LLVM version: Mesa 19.0.1 / LLVM 8.0.0
Kernel version: 5.0.5-arch1-1-ARCH
https://gist.github.com/kode54/3ff952f39b407d6f806a6779838f5335#file-system_stats_rx480-txt
Proton version: 4.2-2

Runs okay, but when I needed to reduce the in-game resolution to 1920x1080 for proper performance, using Borderless Window mode, upon opening the first chest in the game, the resolution appeared to become squashed, as it seemed to resize the in-game video (but not the HUD) to double the height of the screen, blurry as if it was being upscaled from 1080 to 2160, causing the top and bottom of the frame to be impossible to see.

Much like Tank-Missile I'm also having constant stutter with NVIDIA's proprietary driver.

GPU: GTX 970
Driver/LLVM version: 418.56
Kernel version: 5.0.5-200.fc29.x86_64
https://gist.github.com/Newbie13XD/825df4d67f217dbd6a370a3e4c87d4db
Proton version: 4.2-2

There's an option in-game to "disable launcher" - I don't have time now, but someone could try this option, and then restore the renamed files to their original names. Might avoid validation problems, or running afoul of updates.

The option made no difference for me, not that it matters as the game is unplayable even after renaming the executable, I got as far as claptrap saying hi & it completely froze, twice & I had to alt-tab out & kill -9 it. At least we can still play the original version for the moment.

@lucifertdark Okay, at least we know. Thanks for trying.

I can confirm that the game runs perfectly fine, after renaming the game executable to Launcher.exe.

https://gist.github.com/NoXPhasma/b6e8c494cc5f92bbae4aae1f81cb25ee

For people having stuttering on Nvidia cards try changing the Frame limiter to Unlimited.

GPU: GTX 1070
Driver/LLVM version: Nvidia proprietary, 415.27
Kernel version: 4.20.14-042014-lowlatency
Proton version: 4.2-2
Monitor Resolution: 1680x1050

I applied the Launcher fix, as suggested above.

The main menu looks like it updates about once per second (mouse stuttering, claptrap in background teleporting around), independent of settings and resolution.

Cycling through the render resolutions in the settings crashed the game on first attempt. On second attempt, cycling backwards through the list to the highest resolution worked.

After setting all settings to the maximum (except for shadow quality, which is reported as breaking the frame rate at ultra), ingame works flawless at (almost constant) 60FPS.

It works even way better than the native BL2 and PreSequel …

after the rename trick, it works flawlessly and runs even better than the original BL1. 120+ fps buttery smooth on an old r9 270x on amdgpu drivers with max fov with default settings. didn't even feel major shader compilation stutters. just make sure to set fps to unlimited in-game. this is a good candidate for whitelist once the launcher issue is resolved. https://gist.github.com/Francesco149/ca1ac8fa719ca5fa70d86cdceaf1d056

After renaming the launcher and setting the fps to unlimited the game works better than the original. Even the loading screen videos works as intended.

The option of importing characters saved from the original game doesn't work. (I have both games installed) Still you can copy the save files manually.

I think the reason that copying characters doesn't work is due to that the games are stored in separate wineprefixes, and are therefore isolated from each other. Can confirm that disabling "smoothed" framerate fixed my issues too, and it now seems to work flawlessly.

1. Renamed BorderlandsGOTY.exe to Launcher.exe (and vice versa, just in case)

• Game started but with stutering and flickering / increasing frame rate through inGame menu, let's say 'unlimited' (tweak that later if needed) fixed that ; Also, disable launcher and startupMovies through that menu.
• Game freezed EVERY time i eliminated last bandit in Firestone. Managed to terminate program with
  killall -9 Launcher.exe

1. Fetch winetricks and protontricks

wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Sirmentio/protontricks/master/protontricks wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Winetricks/winetricks/master/src/winetricks

1. Set them as executable
   chmod u+x "${PWD}/protontricks" "${PWD}/winetricks"

-- check if You have cabextract installed in Your distro / install it if not installed

1. Add final workarounds

WINESERVER="/<my_big_disk>/SteamLibrary/steamapps/common/Proton 3.7/dist/bin/wineserver" WINETRICKS="${PWD}/winetricks" ${PWD}/protontricks 729040 d3dx9 d3dx9_36 vcrun2005 vcrun2008 vcrun2015

(change Your path as needed, that is my SteamLibrary folder on some big_disk with PROTON v.3.7-8)

So far, so good - works as it should!
GOLDEN KEYS showing 75 - so they are common with my Borderlands 2
Arch Linux kernel 5, GTX970

EDIT font messup

Well, I don't know if it's the day's rest, or the '$ protontricks 729040 d3dx9', but I've made it to fyrestone and completed the first quest or two.

[edit]
No surer way to provoke a problem than to suggest that it's gone. I've frozen once more. I'll proceed down the list of suggestions in the previous post.

i played for ~9 hours today with no freezes or problems of any kind. hm, might be something specific to nvidia users

I haven’t have any crashing in fyrestone and I haven’t used any workarounds. Are you sure you are running 4.2-2?

With respect to savegames, if you copy your original borderlands save directory into the enhanced edition prefix, it can find and import them.

Well, I disabled smoothed framerate and then managed to play for over 2 hours. The only hiccup was when I tried to host; the game crashed with a message box indicating some error that I've completely forgotten. Joining a friend's game worked well though. Aside from the initial troubles the game's performed as well as has been described.

#include <windows.h>
// BorderlandsGOTY.exe

int main( void ) {
	char szPath[] = "BorderlandsGOTY.exe";

	HINSTANCE hRet = ShellExecute( HWND_DESKTOP, // Parent window
	                               "open",       // Operation to perform
	                               szPath,       // Path to program
	                               NULL,         // Parameters
	                               NULL,         // Default directory
	                               SW_SHOW );    // How to open

	/*
	The function returns a HINSTANCE (not really useful in this case)
	So therefore, to test its result, we cast it to a LONG.
	Any value over 32 represents success!
	*/

	if ( (LONG)hRet <= 32 ) {
		MessageBox( HWND_DESKTOP, "Unable to start program", "",
		            MB_OK );
		return 1;
	}

	return 0;
}

Compile this with MinGW compiler

x86_64-w64-mingw32-gcc fukugearbox.c -o Launcher.exe

and replace Launcher.exe with generated one. Voilà! You won't need to mess with this ugly crappy .NET Framework and you won't see this useless launcher!

game runs smoothly for me, but after killing the last bandit in fyrestone, getting the quest to push the button to open Dr Zed's home, the game crashed before loading the cutscene, restarting the game and choosing my character makes me do the tutorial all over again

Having issues here, game launches fine in windows but recieve this error when launching the game:

Attempted to perform the BorderlandsGOTY.exe to Launcher.exe allows the game to get to the splash screen, but I get no further than this.

steam-729040.log

https://gist.github.com/AllOgreTheWorld/f0922a4c21fa8b9421dece3d82711b7f

Uprgrading from Mesa 18.2.8 to 19.0.1 appears to have no effect, same error occurs. Logs and new gist of system info attached.
steam-729040.log
https://gist.github.com/AllOgreTheWorld/a0392c3b07aab292827c23acf113fe05

Works fine for me, except I had to bypass the launcher with stub above

https://gist.github.com/xDShot/58ca109a927f1d1bb5b8bb34f3ba0b1e

@xDShot is that really necessary? Why not just a symlink?

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Well, it was in consideration for Windows platform to replace the launcher as well. And it's unknown how the game could behave if it was launched with renamed executable.

@xDShot The windows thing is a fair point, but I sincerely doubt the renamed executable would be an issue for the game.

Sadly can't get further than the 2K movie without freezing and having to kill -9 - also once or twice it's come up with an error box over the splash that I haven't been able to capture yet, but will update if I can.

steam-729040.log
steam_system_info.txt

There's another gotcha I haven't seen mentioned: If a 5.1 or 7.1 capable sink is the default, the game will try to render audio in 5.1, but only the front left and front right channels actually reach the audio device.

Try as I might, I couldn't find a workaround. You need to switch the default sink in Pulse to one capable of stereo only to get correct audio.

I can not confirm. My default audio device is set as 5.1 and the game starts only using stereo (2 channels).

@AllOgreTheWorld did you find any solution? I have exact same error when launching game

I reported this on the DXVK tracker, but I can't get an apitrace.

When playing the Island of Dr. Ned DLC, having more than 2 particle effects on screen impacts performance heavily.

I'm getting 60 fps normally, but when the games renders fire or lightning, my performance drops to 14 FPS. The issue can be triggered easily when shooting bats on the beach with a shock weapon.
I did an apitrace but apitrace makes Borderlands hang right after launching. All I could do is get Proton logs all the way to the bug.

Software information

Borderlands GOTY Enhanced. 729040.
Custom graphics level, Borderless window, 2560*1080 60Hz, VSync On, Pause game on focus On, Framerate locking off, 16x Anisotropic filtering, FXAA on, Dynamic shadows on, Ultra shadow detail, bullet decals on, Foliage Texture and Detail High, Ambient occlusion Bloom DOF Flare outs ON, Level of detail High.
steam-729040.zip

System information

GPU: RX 580
Driver: DRM 3.27.0, 5.0.2-050002-generic, LLVM 9.0.0, OpenGL 4.5 (Compatibility Profile) Mesa 19.1.0-devel - padoka PPA
Wine version: Proton 4.2-2
DXVK version: 1.0.1

It seems that update to Proton 4.2-3 deleted my saves from the game. Also they don't seem to be backed up to Steam cloud.

I can confirm that in my case no saves were harmed when going from Proton 4.2-2 to 4.2-3.

@tomaszg7 did you delete your compatdata folder for the game? the saves are in there

Of course not :) However the directory ~/.local/share/Steam/steamapps/compatdata/729040/pfx/drive_c/users/steamuser/My Documents/My Games/Borderlands Game of the Year/Binaries/SaveData contains only profile.bin.

The borderlands directory in My Games which I copied manually to migrate save games from original version is still intact (but contains out-of-date saves).

thanks for the heads up then, will keep a backup just in case

Is it too late to recommend starting fresh anyway? I started a new game when I began with this enhanced rerelease, if only because I didn’t know it imported old saves. Lots of bosses and even boss enemies and badasses are dropping random purple loot that I don’t remember seeing so much of in my playthroughs of the original game. I still need to find someone to coop the mandatory coop achievements, including Crawmerax.

E: Can anyone confirm whether saves created with this version are lost, or just manually imported saves?

It might be worth to mention that the game won't start with wayland using the proprietary nvidia
driver.

I'm using Ubuntu 19.04 and gnome with wayland is working nearly out of box
but 3D with XWayland is utterly broken using proprietary nvidia driver.

If you have a similar setup login with xorg and enjoy the game ;-)

@MK-hub It runs kinda bad but it runs now, be sure that you have the most recent version of DXVK and Vulkan drivers installed. Turns out I was missing something in regards to the Vulkan drivers. Installing it fixed this and quite a few other games.

If you are having performance issues, use protontricks or winetricks to install d9vk_master. Also, set the framerate limiter to unlimited. This solved all performance issues for me and I get 200+ fps with no stutter on my 1080ti. The d9vk_master may not even be necessary, but I did so just in case.

Also, as others have stated,you have to rename the original Launcher.exe to something else and rename BorderlandsGOTY.exe to Launcher.exe. Once you do those things and set the proper resolution for your monitor, you will not have any further issues.

@betam4x Borderlands GOTY enhanced uses DX11 renderer only, D9VK won't do anything.

Game always launch unfocused. So if you start in BPM, it starts in background somewhere, for example. So you need to alt-tab every time.

I use Arch btw. Latest Mesa (22.3.3), AMD GPU (vegam, LLVM 15.0.7, DRM 3.49, 6.1.8-zen1-1-zen). KDE Plasma 5.26, Wayland.

Game works fine, but sometimes it does freeze when attempting to start a cutcene. I would upload a Proton log, but it is 450 MB, what shall I do now? @kisak-valve
I would paste the end section, but my text editors are not fast enough to fully load the file.

All the videos are 3840x2160 Bink 2, in a mixture of frame rates, usually either 30 or 29.97. And there are decoding artifacts on at least a few of them under Proton, I guess Bink 2 runtime has some problems? That, or they crunched the bitrate so bad that there's horrible smearing artifacts.

crash_steam-729040.log
A log after a random crash while ingame.

Game works fine with Proton 8, Launcher work. I've set the Framerate Locking to Unlimited to prevent massive stuttering.

Game does not start with Proton 9 Beta/Experimental. Renaming BorderlandsGOTY.exe to Launcher.exe fixes the problem, but this means there is a regression in Proton 9.

Hello @kisak-valve,
Runtime diagnostics: https://gist.github.com/kmaterka/401dbd99892b9380b673fd746c02a292
Log from Proton 9 (does not start): steam-729040.log
Log from Proton 8 (runs fine): steam-729040.log.gz

@kmaterka it should work in the current proton experimental bleeding-edge

@simifor yes, it works correctly with Proton Experimental -> bleeding-edge beta, thanks!

Borderlands should now work fine on proton experimental bleeding-edge

As I already reported above in this issue, the frame limiter is to blame for the lagginess.

It seems there is a regression for this game when I try to run it with Proton 11.0 (beta-5) and Experimental (2026-06-10). The launcher displays "Initialization error" and close it when you click "Ok".

Using Proton 10.0-4 it displays a warning about "system requirements", but starts without issues.

Proton logs: steam-729040.tar.gz

Specs:

• OS: Arch
• Kernel: 6.18.35 (ntsync)
• GPU: RX 6700 XT (Mesa 26.0.6)
• CPU: Ryzen 7 5700G
• DE: Plasma 6.6.5 (wayland)