Cyberpunk 2077’s murderous cops keep spawning from thin air

Like many open-world games, Cyberpunk 2077 has a wanted system that escalates with the player’s law-breaking chaos. At least, that’s how it’s supposed to work. Fans are finding that, instead, police in CD Projekt Red’s new game are particularly aggressive, sometimes literally spawning out of nowhere.

“If you commit any crime, even punching a random person alone in an alley, police officers materialize around you immediately,” one post on the Steam forums reads. “They literally just appear 4-5 feet away.” That same issue is echoed on social media, where players are reporting an unusually sudden arrival of police when a crime is committed.

Polygon has not experienced anything like what fans on social media are describing, but videos showcasing Cyberpunk 2077’s aggressive police bear out the reports above. In the video below by The Gaming Library, the player merely brushes against the police once before the cops start shooting.

Footage uploaded by DSR below shows a player pointing a gun at a cop, which immediately results in a warrant being issued for the player’s arrest. That’s probably how it would work in real life, but technically, no crime has yet been committed in the game.

Arguably, what you see in DSR’s video makes sense — a police officer should react negatively to a firearm, even if it seems aggressive. Grand Theft Auto also works this way, and that franchise set the standard (though some would say the cops are a little overzealous there too.)

A bigger issue seems to be that when Cyberpunk 2077 decides that you’re wanted, it materializes police out of thin air. Around the 30-second mark in the video below by IrakLobsta, you can see the player looking one way, then turning the camera, only to watch a policeman pop out of nowhere. The player then goes on to shoot another civilian, only for the game to immediately spawn another officer in front of them. The same thing can be spotted in other videos as well.

Sometimes, the cops spawn behind the player — even if it’s a literal dead end where nothing should appear.

Hilariously, even within cutscenes, the police in Cyberpunk 2077 seem abnormally fast, to the degree that it looks like a glitch.

The good news is that it’s not particularly hard to decrease your wanted level — all you have to do is drive away, if you can. Some reports say that going indoors or into an elevator does the trick. But hey, looks like someone is finally giving Oblivion guards a run for their money, huh?