Pitchford stated that he played Colossal Cave Adventure and was so enamored by the game that he used a hex editor to examine the code and figure out some of the programming concepts behind it.

[2] After high school, Pitchford went to the University of California, Los Angeles, where his future wife encouraged him to pursue a career in entertainment.

[3] While he proceeded to work on video games on the side, he continued to perform as a professional magician in Hollywood to help pay for school.

[6][7] With no publisher-backed project, Pitchford joined four other Rebel Boat Rockers, some his former 3D Realms colleagues, to found Gearbox Software in February 1999.

[25] PAX East in 2022, Pitchford suggested a Duke Nukem film may be in the works, confirmed when Legendary Entertainment picked up the rights that same year.

According to a Mobi Health News article, the project “aims to build a higher-quality body of data that researchers could someday use to develop novel health or wellness treatments.”[29] In June 2020, Pitchford and Gearbox Entertainment announced a partnership with Direct Relief, a nonprofit humanitarian organization, to provide aid and supplies to medical workers responding to COVID-19.

So let’s have their backs while they are helping save lives.”[31] In a 2022 partnership with the Entertainment Software Association to raise scholarship funds for students following a gaming career, Pitchford auctioned off some of his apparel.

[33] In a Dallas Innovates article about the initiative, Pitchford is quoted saying, “As Gearbox has grown in recent years, our impact on the world around us must grow as well.

By launching Gearbox Gives, we’ll be able to build upon the work we have already done to use our platform for good.”[33] In 2020, Pitchford was credited as the team lead on Borderlands 3, which won the People’s Voice 2020 Webby Awards for Best Art Direction, Best Game Design, and Best User Experience.

[40] In March 2018, Pitchford announced he had joined the advisory board for Fig, a mixed investor/crowdfunding service for video game development.

[47] In October 2019, both sides announced that the lawsuit had been dropped, and a joint statement by the parties called the issue a misunderstanding, and further stated that Pitchford had been exonerated.

[48] In May 2019, David Eddings, the voice actor of the Borderlands character Claptrap accused Pitchford of assault during the 2017 Game Developers Conference.