Battleborn was a free-to-play first-person shooter video game developed by Gearbox Software and published by 2K for PlayStation 4, Windows, and Xbox One.

In response, Gearbox made adjustments in pricing and downloadable content to try to draw new players to the game.

In this meta-game, new character levels will unlock new perks that can be selected on the Helix Tree, alternative outfits, and other cosmetic improvements.

Battleborn requires a constant Internet connection to play due to the game's meta-game features.

Starting from big update from February 2017, all 25 base game characters become available to play right after tutorial story mission.

Gearbox planned to release downloadable content that would include new skins and taunts for existing characters prior to announcement of the game's shutdown.

These species are divided into different factions upon their arrivals, and eventually they united and cooperate with each other by sending out the best fighters, who are labelled as Battleborn, to fight against Varelsi, the origin of the catastrophe.

The first mission forces the player to play as Mellka, an Eldrid operative who is ordered to rendezvous with Deande, a former Jennerit assassin.

[17][18] In a 2017 interview, Pitchford said that prior to Battleborn's development, the principle way to market and promote first-person shooters was to emphasise what abilities the player-character had, which made elements like a detailed game world or narrative a secondary consideration.

[19] Pitchford recognized that they already had experience creating a diverse array of characters through the Borderlands series, and that this roster of heroes approach was gaining popularity in multiplayer online battle arenas.

[19] Several gameplay elements from Brothers in Arms: Furious 4, another project from Gearbox which was cancelled in July 2015, were transferred to the game.

[26] In addition to the standard version, players can purchase the Digital Deluxe Edition, which includes the game's Season Pass and cosmetic items.

The game mode launched alongside the first downloadable content Story Operation, titled "Attikus and the Thrall Rebellion".

"[31] GameSpot awarded it a score of 7 out of 10, saying "With so many moving parts that never quite gel, I found plenty of things to love but just as much to feel confused by and ambivalent about.

"[35] IGN awarded it a score of 7.1 out of 10, saying "Battleborn's fun heroes and leveling will keep you hooked despite a lack of content.

I typically grow bored with adversarial multiplayer after about an hour or two, yet I have spent so much time with this title already and want to keep going.

"[40] PlayStation LifeStyle awarded it a score of 8 out of 10, saying "If Borderlands and the MOBA genre could have a baby, I imagine it would look something like Battleborn.

Gearbox Software’s signature style shines here, even if the humor falls flat most of the time"[41] In looking back at the game a year after its release, Destructoid's Darren Nakamura felt Battleborn was an excellent game once a player had put time to acquire a larger number of playable characters to select from, and had amassed gear that created unique and powerful loadouts for specific characters, but a player would need to work through tens to hundreds of hours of gameplay to acquire these elements, making it off-putting to new players.

According to director Randy Varnell, the launch week sales of the game is similar to that of the first Borderlands, which had gone on to sell over 7.8 million units.

[50] By July 2016, the number of concurrent players on PC had dropped below 1000, compared to more than 12,000 at the launch of the game,[51] and Destructoid reported that at the game's first anniversary, the number of concurrent players sometimes dropped below 100 during off-peak hours, making it difficult to launch a match.

By September 2017, Gearbox announced that after the release of the game's final update, released on October 23, 2017, their support for the title would enter "maintenance mode", effectively shutting down any further development but keeping a skeleton team to maintain the game's servers and fix any critical bugs that may be found.