Gearbox Software, the studio behind the FPS looter shooter series Borderlands, will be flying a terminally ill fan, Caleb McAlpine, out to see Borderlands 4 ahead of schedule next month, after his wish to do so was spread across social media.
McAlpine asked the game’s subreddit last week if anyone there knew how to get in touch with Gearbox, revealing that he’d been diagnosed with stage 4 terminal cancer, and that the doctors had given him approximately seven to twelve months to live.
“I am a die hard Borderlands fan and don’t know if I will be around for Borderlands 4,” McAlpine wrote. “Is there anyone that knows how to get in touch with Gearbox to see if there is a way to play the game early?” Co-founder of the studio, Randy Pitchford, promised on X that they’ll look into “making something happen”.
McAlpine then spoke to GamesRadar and confirmed that, yes, Gearbox would absolutely be flying him out to see a work-in-progress build.
“I honestly did not expect it to blow up like that,” McAlpine writes to the site via email: “I had thousands of notifications and streamers [whose videos I’ve watched] commenting on it. When I received an email from Randy I couldn’t believe it. It was awesome to see the CEO of Gearbox emailing me and telling me that he would do whatever he could to help me out. I was just floored to be honest. In a good way. I never expected anything like this. It almost felt like a dream to be honest.”
The 37-year-old veteran also told the site about where his enjoyment of the series started—during his time in the army: “We would actually have Borderlands parties at the house or in the barracks, where we would put three or four TVs together and play that way … I have been playing the games ever since. All of the games are good in their own way, from characters to weapons. They are just downright fun games to play.”
The full interview itself is a heart wrenching read. McAlpine explains that he’d been “expecting to grow old and hopefully have a family of my own one day. I moved in with my folks on Christmas day of 2023 to help them out, and in a way help myself out as well. Seven or eight months later they were in the hospital room with me when I was being told I had cancer.”
However, the support from those close to him—as well as strangers online—has helped him deal with the awful toll that terminal illness takes: “There has been so much love and support shown from my family and friends, and then it has been multiplied by thousands from people that do not know me. It’s just been remarkable and overwhelming if I am being honest to say the least.”
His fundraiser has also seen a sterling show of support, raising over $12,000—134% of the original goal—to cover his medical expenses, gas for travel, and food “due to being on a strict full liquid diet for the foreseeable future.” Many of the donations in question coincide with his initial plea on Reddit, so the Borderlands community has thoroughly pitched in.
Unfortunately, as is the case with severe illness, support can only do so much. Life is still difficult for McAlpine, as he writes: “Cancer is no joke, the pain I have associated with my colorectal cancer that spread to my entire liver is bad enough. But when you add chemo into the mix it’s just unbearable.
“There are good days, don’t get me wrong, but I have had so many bad days because of the side effects from the chemo that I legitimately have just been in bed crying from the pain. The morphine and the gabapentin that my palliative care team put me on doesn’t touch it. So for anyone that is going through cancer treatments, my heart goes out to you and to your family members that have to watch you struggle with this horrible disease.”
Still, gaming has helped him through the worst of it. “For chemo days I was gifted a Switch by [my] friends, and of course the very first games I bought were the entire Borderlands series … I immediately loaded up BL3 and got right back into the vault hunting on the Switch. I take my Switch with me to the infusion clinic and I have Borderlands geared up and ready to go.”
