Pokemon Scarlet and Violet has received heavy criticism concerning its poor performance. The game is plagued by massive slowdown, especially in cities. By now, fans of the series have come to expect low framerates and pop-in. Still, it’s particularly egregious with the latest games. However, some of the problems may be due to a memory leak, which is something that Game Freak could patch.
Pokemon Scarlet and Violet memory leak may be part of their performance problems
According to leaker Centro Pokemon, part of the reason for the slowdown in Scarlet and Violet is that the game has a memory leak. The leak manifests anytime players enter a city and will continue to build until the game slows to a standstill or crashes.
For now, the only fix is to restart the game when leaving a city. You can do this by either shutting down the game manually and relaunching it, or placing the Switch in sleep mode and then powering it up again.
If the leaker is correct, the Switch’s memory isn’t being cleared properly when you are in a city. So, as you continue to play, there’s less available RAM. The leak leads to lower framerates and general instability.
Fortunately, the devs can patch a memory leak. So, part of the poor performance we’re seeing in Pokemon Scarlet and Violet can be fixed in an update.
