Those who have pre-purchased Borderlands 3 through Steam will be able to pre-load the game on March 10. Once the game releases, you will be able to start playing on the 13th as soon as 7am PT, 10am ET, 3pm UK, 4pm CET. One of the cool things about the release is it will allow you to play with others who purchased the game through the Epic Games Store. PC cross-play workes between the versions thanks to the magic of SHiFT Matchmaking. When launching the game for the first time on Steam, and on Epic after installing a new patch, a “PC Cross-Play” screen will appear. This gives you the option to enable or disable the feature. Disabling this feature will restrict you to playing with other people on the same PC platform, but you can always re-enable it at any time through the options menu. A pre-existing SHiFT account is not required to participate in Cross-Play. Whether you chose to enable or disable cross-play, you will still be prompted to set a PC Cross-Play Display Name. This is required for the new SHiFT Matchmaking functionality. Eventually, you will also be able to send in-game mail to players on Steam or the Epic Games Store, but when not when it first releases. This feature will be implemented ina future update. If you are switching over from the Epic Games Store version of the game to Steam, you will be able to transfer your save files over. This will have to be done manually, though, so be careful you don’t lose your save files. Backups are your friend. Gearbox will post instructions on how to manually transfer save files over once the Steam version is released.
