Cyberpunk 2077's T-Pose Bug Was Meant To Avoid Crashes

When you think of Cyberpunk 2077 today, it's definitely a successful RPG, enjoying immense appreciation from the community, a steady influx of exciting mods, and even receiving its own animated Netflix show, Edgerunners. Yet, if you recall, just four years ago, it was a very different story.

There were many reasons for this arguably one of the worst game launches in history, a release so buggy that it carried a warning label on Xbox and was even removed from sale on PlayStation. The massive success of The Witcher 3 raised expectations, coupled with a promise to deliver a rich adaptation of a cult tabletop hit, alongside considerable technical requirements, the game's size, what it lets you do, and so on. It required serious effort, challenging and full of crunch, to bring the game to its current state, which now faces few complaints about performance or bugs.

In a recent detailed analysis of CD Projekt Red's recovery from Cyberpunk 2077's disastrous launch, Lead Engine Programmer Charles Tremblay revealed the reason behind T-poses, one of the game's most infamous bugs. According to him, Cyberpunk experienced memory leaks, where the game's memory usage increased the longer it ran. This issue was particularly problematic on consoles, where players could suspend the game for many hours without fully closing it.

"In theory, the game could run infinitely, and at some point, we'd get some fragmentation issues or memory problems, and we now have no more memory to tackle some of the animations or something. And then you have a choice: either you show a T-pose, or you hard crash", explained Charles Tremblay.

"What do you prefer? We prefer not to hard crash." And so: many, many legendary T-pose bugs.

Cyberpunk 2077 remains a massive game today, filled with complexity and numerous interconnected systems. As Tremblay says, "Sometimes you have the streaming that's not working, memory is a problem, and then you have all the gameplay systems that expect [those to work fine]. And then when you have all those permutations of conditions, you multiply by one million people, then you have just one weird bug – you're like, 'Oh my god'".

Read the full story of how CD Projekt Red saved Cyberpunk 2077 here and join our 80 Level Talent platform and our Telegram channel, follow us on Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, TikTok, and Reddit, where we share breakdowns, the latest news, awesome artworks, and more.