Saber CEO hides USB drive jab at Randy Pitchford inside Rideshare 'Stimulator' trailer

Saber Interactive CEO Matt Karch buried a dig at Gearbox boss Randy Pitchford inside the trailer for Rideshare 'Stimulator' — and once you know what to look for, it's hard to unsee. The shot was confirmed by Karch himself to Game File's Stephen Totilo.

Two details in the trailer tip the hand. A narrator mentions meeting "the randiest of passengers" — a pointed use of a word that doubles as Pitchford's first name — and a Texas license plate reading "USB DRV" appears on screen, clear enough to read but not zoomed in enough to scream for attention. Both are references to a well-known story about Pitchford accidentally leaving a USB drive at Medieval Times; the drive reportedly contained a video of a camgirl performance he'd saved because, as a magic enthusiast, he wanted to study the technique. The drive was found and returned while Pitchford was traveling, meaning Gearbox staff got to it first. Karch told Game File the motivation was straightforward: "The dig is because Randy took shots at Embracer in Borderlands 4. Without Embracer, Randy is performing magic tricks at birthday parties for a living."

The backstory here runs through Embracer Group's chaotic mid-2020s collapse. Embracer bought Gearbox in 2021 for up to $1.3 billion, then sold it to Take-Two in 2024 for $460 million — just a month after offloading Saber Interactive for $247 million. Pitchford publicly called the Take-Two deal the "best possible scenario" at the time, but by 2025 he was saying Borderlands 4's story was inspired by the Gearbox sale. The game then shipped with a location called Embracer's Bluff — a trash-filled town with a vending machine that kills customers, a talking AI toilet, and a ruler apparently living in a hot tub surrounded by sex toys. Neither Pitchford nor Gearbox ever officially confirmed the location is a Embracer reference, but the subtext isn't exactly subtle. Karch, who has consistently backed Embracer and its CEO Lars Wingefors since Saber's sale, clearly read it the same way everyone else did.

The whole exchange is a rare case of gaming industry beef playing out in actual game content rather than on social media — Pitchford via an in-game location, Karch via a trailer easter egg and a very quotable one-liner. Whether Pitchford responds, in a trailer or otherwise, remains to be seen.