Memory leak
Also called: Memory leaks, Leaking memory, RAM leak
A memory leak is a bug where a game keeps memory it no longer needs, so RAM use grows over a session until the game slows down or crashes.
A memory leak is a bug where a program allocates memory and never releases it after it stops needing it. Wikipedia describes it as a resource leak caused by incorrect management of memory allocations (Wikipedia, "Memory leak", accessed 11 Nov 2026). Microsoft's C++ documentation adds that a small leak may go unnoticed at first, then cause anything from poor performance to a crash when the app runs out of memory (Microsoft Learn, "Find memory leaks with the CRT library", accessed 11 Nov 2026).
In a game, a leak often shows up only after hours of play: frame rate drops, loading gets slower, and then the game closes. Short test sessions miss it, which is why players report it after launch. In our sample of 27,156 English launch reviews of 95 September 2026 Steam launches, 18 mentioned a memory leak, VRAM or GPU errors, in 11 of 95 games.
QA finds leaks with a soak test. A build runs for hours on a fixed scenario while memory use is logged every hour. Memory that keeps climbing and drops only when the game restarts points to a leak, and the report attaches those logs with the build ID.
Updated · Written by JJ, founder of Jumbo Jelly.
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Related terms
- Soak test
A soak test runs a game build for many hours without restarting to catch memory leaks, slowdowns and crashes that only appear over long sessions.
- Steam Deck Verified
Deck Verified is Valve's top Steam Deck compatibility rating, given when a game passes all checks and needs no configuration from the player.
- Regression pass
A regression pass retests features that already worked after a code change, to catch bugs the new patch broke in old parts of the game.