Growing up is a normal part of life. Except for certain Horizon Zero Dawn players on PC who remained stuck as young Aloy after their games crashed in the middle of a cutscene.
Out today, the game’s 1.03 patch on PC fixes a number of bugs, of which the PC version has had many, including the one where “some players would remain a child and not transition to adult Aloy.”
This Peter Pan bug, while seemingly rare, nevertheless did halt some players’ progress. In one post that blew up on the game’s subreddit earlier this month, user ashrashrashr shared footage of them running around as young Aloy long after she should have grown up. Horizon Zero Dawn’s beginning tracks Aloy from birth to adulthood, with a small section where players explore a cave while the heroine is still a child. According to Aschrashrashr and others, their games crashed during the subsequent cutscene that time jumps to older Aloy, and when they restarted they were still the younger version.
Even dying in the game couldn’t lift the curse. Fortunately, some developers could.