Modern Warfare dev explains huge update size and why it’s actually good
Infinity WardThe Season Two update for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare came in at a whopping 67GB for PC and Xbox, and 51GB for PS4, causing players to delete other games and wait hours and hours for downloads. But, an Infinity Ward dev has clarified the reason for the absurd patch size.
Only two weeks prior to the Season Two update, another patch also went out, which demanded almost 50GB for PC users too.
This is all after the game itself is installed, which required a whopping 175GBs at launch. It’s safe to say that many players, especially those on consoles with 500GB hard drives, are getting just a little perplexed by these massive file sizes.
Infinity WardSeeing (and perhaps expecting) the furor on social media after the patch went live on February 11, Infinity Ward Production Director Paul Haile has apologized and explained on Twitter.
“As we push season 2 live I just want to apologize about the download size of this update,” Haile wrote. “We’re constantly trying to fight back against both download size and disk footprint and in this case, we’re re-sending new asset packs to reduce the overall size of the game.”
What this means, is that despite the actual update size being so large, the new assets will replace the old, therefore reducing the overall size of the Modern Warfare game file on players’ systems.
this is what has caused the update today to be so big. after todays download you should see that, even though we've added season 2 and the associated content for it, the overall size of the game should shrink a little on your local hard drive.
— Paul Haile (@Tyrael) February 11, 2020
“After today’s download, you should see that even though we’ve added Season Two and the associated content for it, the overall size of the game should shrink a little on your local hard drive,” he concluded.
In better news, the developer also revealed that changes have been made in this update to manage the data better, which should result in smaller update sizes in future patches.
Perhaps most interestingly, for console users at least, will be a future option to deselect certain DLC packs. “In a future update we’re going to also be adding a DLC pack management screen for console users, to allow you to pick and choose which DLC packs you want to keep, and remove others to recover more space as well.”
i'm very conscious of the overall size of MW and we're doing what we can to minimize this for everyone. thanks!
— Paul Haile (@Tyrael) February 11, 2020
Although many PC users will have larger disk spaces, with the availability of high capacity SSDs and 2TB hard drives, console users are limited. The PS4 Pro and Xbox One X come with 1TB hard drives, which can fill up quickly with only a handful of modern games, and the basic consoles only have 500GB.
Having a single game using up over 100GB is far from ideal, and often forces players to delete entire games to make space for a new one. Developers will know that this is not good for player retention too, as the prospect of having to reinstall a game all over again might be enough to put someone off playing it again.
One other reason this update may have been so large might have to do with the battle royale game mode which has been teased and leaked, though has not been officially announced yet.