RAMnarök may not be a literal cataclysm, of the kind that smashed Cinder City’s version of Seoul into dirty bits, but it ironic that the upcoming tactical shooter MMO seemingly spent much of the past day oblivious to the fact that there’s a worldwide memory crisis going on. Upon yesterday’s launch of its Steam page, Cinder City declared a set of system requirements that listed 32GB of RAM among the minimum specs – twice what you’d typically see for a modern, well-budgeted 3D game – and a honking 64GB in the recommended specs.

I contacted a representative for publishers NC (formerly NCsoft), because, I mean, yeesh, and a day later, and have not received clarification either way. However, as of this afternoon, those recommended specs have silently changed: the GPU requirement rising from a RTX 4060 to an RTX 4070, but RAM dropping from 64GB to somewhat less outrageous 32GB.

In truth, I don’t entirely buy these new specs either. Cinder City is far enough away from finished-ness to lack a public release window, let alone a specific date, and the almost comical mismatch between the minimum specs’ 32GB RAM requirement (typically the reserve of luxury 4K rigs) and the GPU requirement of the geriatric RTX 2060 suggests, at least to my mind, that these are mere placeholders.

Granted, even if the original lists turned out to be final, Cinder City wouldn’t be the first game to suffer from Random Acts of Madness in their recommended specs. Escape from Tarkov and shipping sim Seafarer both want 64GB for their nicer settings, while Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 lists 64GB in its ‘Ideal’ specs tier. Are these the vanguards of high-memory normalisation? Again, I don’t really see it – three games wouldn’t even make a majority among the works that launched on Steam just today. And as inevitably as the cycle of finer visuals needing faster PCs will continue to turn, there have been recorded instances of developers toning down their tech spec requirements, in direct response to the unprecedented shittiness of the current component shortage.

I’ll update this story if I hear back from NC or developers Big Fire Games, though while we’re here, I confess to mixed feelings about Cinder City as a game per se. South Korea is absolutely underutilised as a game setting, so it’s a nice change to see Seoul – even a post-ruination rendering of it – given star billing. Not yet convinced by the gunplay, though, and the operative designs often suffer from The First Descendent Syndrome, where the blokes rock up in chunky armour and the ladies are put in lightly tactical swimsuits.

Update 3/7: NC have responded, saying the original spec listings were posted in error, and that the current requirements remain subject to change:

“We recently identified an error in the memory specification listed under the system requirements on our Steam Store page.

We sincerely apologize for any confusion this may have caused. The information has now been corrected, and the recommended memory requirement is 32GB RAM.

Please note: The current system requirements are based on our latest development build. 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.”