Pokemon Scarlet and Violet performance issues can be caused by a memory leak

Pokemon Scarlet and Violet was heavily criticized for his poor performance. The game is plagued by a massive slowdown, especially in cities. Meanwhile, fans of the series have come to expect low framerates and pop-ins. Still, it’s especially egregious in the latest games. However, some of the issues may be due to a memory leak that Game Freak could patch.

Pokemon Scarlet and Violet Memory Leak can be part of their performance issues

According to leaker Centro Pokemon, one reason for the slowdown in Scarlet and Violet is that the game has a memory leak. The leak manifests every time players enter a town and keeps building until the game freezes or crashes.

At the moment the only solution is to restart the game when leaving a town. You can do this by either manually shutting down and restarting the game, or by putting the Switch to sleep and then turning it back on.

If the leaker is correct, the Switch won’t properly wipe its memory when you’re in a city. So if you keep playing, there will be less RAM available. The leak results in lower frame rates and general instability.

Fortunately, the developers are able to patch a memory leak. So some of the poor performance we’re seeing in Pokemon Scarlet and Violet can be fixed in an update.