Update 7/2/2026 at 1:06pm CT: The CINDER CITY team has reached out to Destructoid with a statement saying the initial memory requirement of 64GB was a mistake and that the game will actually only require 32GB of RAM. “The current system requirements are based on our latest development build,” the company wrote. “As optimization work continues, the final system requirements at launch may be lower than those currently listed. We will share updated and more accurate system requirements closer to release. We remain committed to providing accurate and up-to-date information, and we appreciate your understanding and continued support.”
Well, this was bound to happen. As games grow ever bolder and want to make their worlds as big and as comprehensive as possible, they are inevitably going to start asking for more and more resources to run all that. But I didn’t think we’d get to 64GB RAM recommendations any time soon.
As spotted by VideoCardz, an open-world game called Cinder City posted its system requirements on Steam, asking for a minimum of 32GB of RAM and recommending 64GB if you are to run the game at max settings with a satisfying FPS. That is on top of recommending a 7800X3D CPU and a 4060.
At the moment, a single kit of 64GB RAM costs around $860, with refurbished and unknown brands running at $700 at the lowest.
And it’s not even clear why the game would be asking for this much memory, especially considering how most players today have no real means of obtaining it even if they did want to dish out nearly a thousand bucks for a single kit of RAM. The graphics look cool and the style seems catchy, but nothing in the promotional material makes this game so far removed from the best-looking titles on the market that it’d need so much memory.
I mean, GTA 6 is about to come out on the base PS5, which has 16GB of unified memory, meaning both its CPU and GPU use the same memory pool of 16GB. It’ll probably run at 30 fps or even 60 if there’s a performance mode, begging the question: why does Cinder City need this much memory?
I hope the devs come clean and explain it, since their minimum requirement is also pretty beefy at 32GB, and even that costs up to $400 or more at the moment.
These outages are only going to get worse as AI continues eating up all the memory in the world, that is, if the recently filed lawsuit against the biggest RAM manufacturers doesn’t reveal some sort of collusion to drive prices up artificially.
