'Cyberpunk 2077' Players Are Fixing Parts of the Game Before CD Projekt

Cyberpunk 2077 is here in all its glory and pain. On some machines, it’s a visual spectacle pushing the limits of current technology and delivering on the promise of Deus Ex, but open world. On other machines, including last-gen consoles, it’s a unoptimized and barely playable nightmare. Developer CD Projekt Red has said it’s working to improve the game, but fans already have a number of fixes, particularly if you’re using an AMD CPU.

Right now, Cyberpunk 2077 is playable but filled with bugs. During my 30 hours with the game, I’ve seen a lot of floating cigarettes around Keanu Reeves, I occasionally leap naked to the roof of my car as I cruise Night City’s streets, and the waypoint system typically just doesn’t work. I’m still having a blast, but the bugs can strike at any moment and they’re often weird.

Over the weekend, Sony began issuing refunds to players upset by the bugs and performance issues plaguing the console version of Cyberpunk 2077. Developer CD Projekt Red released a statement that apologized for the state of the game, encouraged players to seek a refund if they’re unhappy, and promised to keep working on the game. “After the holidays, we’ll continue working—we’ll release two large patches starting with Patch #1 in January. This will be followed by Patch #2 in February,” CD Projekt Red’s leadership said on Twitter.

Fans aren’t waiting for the developer however and over the weekend AMD CPU users discovered that a few small tweaks could improve performance on their PCs. Some players reported performance gains of as much as 60 percent.

Cyberpunk 2077 seems to be a CPU intensive game and, at release, it isn’t properly optimized for AMD chips. “If you run the game on an AMD CPU and check your usage in task manager, it seems to utilise 4 (logical, 2 physical) cores in frequent bursts up to 100% usage, whereas the rest of the physical cores sit around 40-60%, and their logical counterparts remain idle,” Redditor BramblexD explained in a post on the /r/AMD subreddit. Basically, Cyberpunk 2077 is only utilizing a portion of any AMD chips power.

Digital Foundry, a YouTube channel that does in-depth technical analysis of video games, noticed the AMD issue as well. “It really looks like Cyberpunk is not properly using the hyperthreads on Ryzen CPUs,” Digital Foundry said in a recent video.

To fix this issue, the community has developed three separate solutions. One involves altering the game’s executable with a hex editor, the other involves editing a config file, and a third is an unofficial patch built by the community. All three do the same thing—unleash the power of AMDs processors. 

“Holy shit are you a wizard or something? The game is finally playable now!” One redditor said of the hex editing technique. “With this tweak my CPU usage went from 50% to ~75% and my frametime is so much more stable now.”

Use any of these fixes at your own risk as it’s possible they aren’t stable. “These changes can possibly crash your Cyberpunk 2077 and Windows,” the user who came up with the config file fix said on Reddit. “I can't guarantee this will massively improve your performance, I can only say mine did a huge leap and the response from my friends has been very positive.”

CDPR released Cyberpunk 2077 on GOG without any digital right’s management. Because of that, it’s been easy for modders and hackers to bust open the game and start tweaking. It hasn’t been out for a week yet and already Nexus Mods—a site that collects and sorts mods for video games—is full of tweaks and fixes for the game’s PC version. The number one mod is a version of the unofficial patch that helps performance on AMD cards. But there’s a reshading fix for high dynamic range monitors, a small patch with various quality of life adjustments like a dedicated button for dodging, and dozens of pre-made characters to use for V.

CDPR’s last game, The Witcher 3, was also released in a shabby state. It was a bug ridden mess at launch and ran poorly on consoles. CDPR spent years tweaking and improving it until it became the beloved classic it is today. It looks like the same thing will happen with Cyberpunk 2077, but until the official patches start rolling out the fans will lead the way in fixing the game.

Cyberpunk 2077 is a PC game release the likes of which we haven’t seen in years. It came to market full of ambitions, but kind or broken. It demands so much of the system it's on that players are tinkering with it to get it working right on their machines. Fans releasing their own DIY fixes for a video game faster than the devs can is the essence of PC gaming.