Possible BGE Bug. Need help Diagnosing for report.

Here is what I have so far…
The following file is a procedural walking animation demo that was made in blender 2.69: vorticon07a.blend (2.76 MB)
From 2.7 on up this demo fails to run properly. All bone animations are null and stuck in the default T-pose. However, all works as it should if I enable any of the following modifiers for the alien model: Edge split (causes nasty lag spikes), Decimation (no lag or errors as long as kept at zero), Simple Deform (same as decimation), Mirror (same as edge split), Bevel (worse than edge split), etc. (only a select few have no effect during runtime.).

So… What’s causing this error? The only oddity ive found here is the lack of animation when the armature modifier is alone. It doesn’t seem to happen anywhere else…

After 2.7?. Skinning does not work without any action.
Armature works, but skinning not.
You may fix that by inserting small action (one keyframe, any bone). Action length does not matter, may set zero.
That is enought to tell armature use skinning.
I tested and it works.

I cannot find related bug report. Seems real bug for me (or is it feature?)

No bug reports have been made relating to this problem as of yet. Your solution did work as you said it would. However I still find it odd how it stays in its t-pose when no keyframes have been set even though I used the Run Armature actuator. Also, why is the modifier system influencing the armature animation system during runtime?

I’m thinking that this bug has been fixed: https://developer.blender.org/rBbf157ce im not sure at the moment though.f