Map rotation won’t be possible in Call of Duty: Warzone according to a developer because the file size of the game is just too large. Other battle royales often include a selection of different maps that cycle between games but that will not be the case for Activision’s hit CoD multiplayer mode — at least in the near future.
Why can’t Call of Duty: Warzone cycle maps?
Speaking in an interview with YouTube streamer TeeP, Warzone developer Josh Bridge confirmed that rotating between different maps in the battle royale simply wasn’t practical. The live operations lead explained that the issue is that the maps take up a huge amount of space and it would be impractical for players to have several installed at the same time. Responding to a question from TeeP, Bridge said that Raven Software “wants that” but the “install and reinstall sizes are fucking crazy.”
According to the dev, updates to Warzone often see the game lose players as people run out of space or simply don’t want to spend time having to download large files. Across the various platforms that the battle royale is available on, it can take anywhere between 80 GB and 120 GB to fully install. With many of Warzone’s users still playing on older consoles like the PS4 and Xbox One, this can take up a significant amount of hard drive space.
The main issue is that Caldera and Verdansk are built entirely in the same engine used to create the mainline Call of Duty games. This engine was never intended to support games with massive maps and hundreds of players, meaning that it demands far more hard drive space than other battle royale games such as Apex Legends and PUBG. That leaves map rotation as something that Raven is shooting for later down the line, possibly in the Warzone sequel due out next year.
In other news, the name for the Breath of the Wild 2 sequel might have leaked, and developers have confirmed that Dying Light 2 won’t get a battle royale mode.
