StarCraft actually let you save replays which were just player inputs - which begs the question why save games couldn’t do this, but I digress - and I clearly remember attempting to watch a replay after a major game update and seeing it fall apart after a few minutes.
The replay was of a 40 minute game. It ran fine for the first few minutes, then I’m not sure what went wrong but suddenly all the characters stopped moving (except the automated mining drones) and the game just stayed like that for the next 30+ minutes.