From missing NPCs to abrupt crashes, CD Projekt RED’s Cyberpunk 2077 continues to suffer from a barrage of glitches and game-breaking bugs. But the latest issue could be one of the most frustrating yet, especially for those who have spent dozens of hours in-game.
Tom’s Hardware reports that a save-corruption bug is plaguing PC users. Players are finding that save files over 8MB are suddenly corrupted.
The official CD Projekt RED forums are awash with complaints, while Redditors have also converged on multiple threads to report similar problems. It appears that spending a lot of time using the game’s crafting system boosts Cyberpunk 2077’s save file sizes, which triggers longer loading times. Many eventually culminate in a save file being ruined and data unrecoverable.
Warning signs appear before the save files are corrupted, at least in some situations. As file sizes enlarge, black screens appear for up to 30 seconds or more, which indicates there is a problem. Players are unable to resume their game and are instead met with “Saved data is damaged and cannot be loaded.”
CD Projekt RED’s own forum moderators appear to be aware of the issue. Several have suggested that this problem isn’t a bug but how the game is designed. One responder’s solution was simply to have players try an earlier save and continue on from there. “Unfortunately the save is damaged and can’t be recovered,” a moderator wrote. “Please use an older save file to continue playing and try to keep a lower amount of items and crafting materials.”
Additional solutions offered by CD Projekt RED mods involve backing up saves, repairing the game, uninstalling any mods, and then re-enabling them after repairing the game. These options do not appear satisfactory for many users, who have lost hours of gameplay progress.
It remains to be seen whether CD Projekt RED will address this particular issue in a future patch or if it may be resolved with the patch scheduled for Dec. 21.
