How to Avoid Cyberpunk 2077 Error Breaking Save
Considering it’s one of the best-selling games of the year, Cyberpunk 2077 is a mess . It may work well on your PC if you have good enough specs, but there are still many serious bugs to be wrestled with. One of the worst-case scenarios can mess up your save file without warning, resulting in the loss of several hours of gameplay.
According to numerous reports on the Cyberpunk 2077 subreddit , GOG tech support and the Steam Community page , if your save file is larger than 8MB, Cyberpunk 2077 will refuse to download it. This permanently damages the save file, which can be devastating to your progress in the game if you don’t have a backup file.
Worse, the developer of CD Project Red apparently knew about it, but still hasn’t thought to warn the players.
The company has responded to several complaints, stating that the limitation is intentional, but it may increase the supported file size in future fixes. Unfortunately, already corrupted saves cannot be recovered. This means that until a potential patch arrives, you can always mess up your saved game if the file gets too large. However, you can avoid this by slightly tweaking your gameplay.
Craft and loot sparingly – and don’t cheat items
Over-crafting weapons or keeping too many collectibles in your character’s inventory seem like the most reliable ways to populate your save file. Given that Cyberpunk 2077 is an open world RPG that actively encourages you to loot everything, you would think CD Projekt Red would warn players that having too many items could ruin their save, but I digress.
Players can avoid this annoying incident by looting only what they need and carrying or crafting as few items as possible. You should also avoid using duplicate item glitches to trick Cyberpunk 2077 . Sure, this may seem like a simple shortcut to keep the best cars and equipment safe, but you risk completely ruining your save by overusing the mistake.
Track your total game time
Limiting your desire to steal and copy whatever you encounter in Night City will reduce the risk of a corrupted save, but your file will still gradually grow in size regardless of your playstyle. At some point, it can get too big.
Unfortunately, it’s hard to estimate how much data each game hour adds to a Cyberpunk 2077 save file. Browse the CD Projekt Red forums and you will find users who encountered an error after playing for 70-100 hours, and others after just 25-40 hours. Because of this discrepancy, it is difficult to recommend a total playtime limit. However, it’s important to know that every moment you play the game will increase the size of your save file, so keep that time in mind.
Always have a backup
Admittedly, while we don’t know for sure how much each item you pick up or a minute of gameplay adds to your savefile, it’s hard to give specific numbers. A dedicated team of Cyberpunk 2077 players counted the numbers and tracked every kilobyte so that others could avoid losing save files, but save corruption will be an ongoing possibility until CD Projekt Red fixes the error.
Even if they do – and this is a big “if” – some users encountered the error even though their savegame file is less than 8MB, which suggests there may be other reasons as well. Hence, the only real solution is to back up your Cyberpunk 2077 saves frequently so that you can restore your progress if you accidentally play the game “too much.”