Call of Duty: Modern Warfare is well known for its immense file size on PC, PS4, and Xbox One. It only keeps getting bigger as well; with Infinity Ward’s FPS taking up way more hard drive space than its peers, what’s the deal? Why are Modern Warfare updates so big? Keep scrolling to find out.
Why are Call of Duty: Modern Warfare updates so big?
It isn’t out of the ordinary for CoD: Modern Warfare updates to weigh in at tens of gigabytes. When the latest download seemingly hit 80+ GB people understandably weren’t happy, though, in reality, the patch actually capped out at 45 GB. That’s still not great, weighing in at around the size of your average game in its entirety. This specific update is actually so large in order to decrease the overall file size, however, backward as that may sound.
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Infinity Ward Senior Communications Manager Ashton Williams confirmed as much via Twitter. “The Season 4 download is going to be large,” she stated frankly. While fans have widely come to expect that, this time around it’s in an effort to “reduce the overall disc space that MW and WZ take up.”
The Season 4 download is going to be large. In order to reduce the overall disc space that MW and WZ take up, we're compressing a bunch of assets. Once installed, the S4 launch will only take up an additional 4GB on consoles for all of the new content.
— Ashton Williams (@ashtonisVULCAN) June 10, 2020
The update will compress “a bunch of assets” to reduce their memory consumption, which means that once the large installation is complete the S4 patch will only actually add 4 GB to the game’s overall file size. Although players will still face a lengthy initial wait, this is a great way of addressing the community’s concerns regarding the rapidly expanding Modern Warfare file size.
While that explains the most recent patch, historically they’ve been a similar size without boasting the nifty compression feature. While there’s no concrete reasoning for their substantial girth in comparison to other games, it’s worth bearing in mind that Modern Warfare is essentially two games in one. Not only is there the campaign, Spec Ops, and standard multiplayer suite comprising the base MW package, but it also includes the standalone Warzone battle royale mode. Throw in 4K textures for PC and the enhanced consoles, and you have a lot of data to update right there.
