Why is Modern Warfare so big? Huge file size explained
Modern Warfare has been out for almost two years, and after continuous updates, the game takes up a huge amount of space. Here’s why Modern Warfare’s file size is so huge.
Modern Warfare started life with a massive 175GB requirement to store on drives, making it one of the biggest games ever. While fans assumed that Infinity Ward would work to greatly reduce this number, continuous updates have pushed it higher and higher, and despite their best efforts, it still takes requires the same space as it did at launch.
Obviously, this is a huge amount of space for a game to take up, so players have been trying to figure out why it needs to take such a significant chunk of your drives. Here’s everything we know about why Modern Warfare is so big.
Why does Modern Warfare take up so much space?
File size has always been an issue for Infinity Ward with Modern Warfare. Back in February 2020, one of the game’s producers apologized on Twitter about the size of updates, saying that the team were “constantly trying to fight back against both download size and disk footprint,” as they dropped asset packs to try and reduce the overall size.
The devs tried again in March 2021, reducing the game by 30.6GB, but that just brought it back to 175GB, and still suggested it would need more for mandatory updates.
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As for why it’s so large, Infinity Ward have never said officially, but there are plenty of theories. In general, the most accepted idea is the fact that Modern Warfare has too many assets. Some players suggest that holding the cosmetics from the store along with un-compressed textures for maps are what cause these issues, while others believe that Infinity Ward simply didn’t do enough to compress the game down.
Thankfully, there are some ways to bring this number down a little. If you don’t play Modern Warfare multiplayer much, you can choose to delete the game without losing Warzone, while you can choose to uninstall specific portions of the game if you no longer play that mode.
Unfortunately, it seems unlikely that Infinity Ward will reduce the file size any further now, with the game rapidly approaching it’s second birthday. We can only hope that the developers learn some lessons from this game, and their next offering isn’t so hard-drive hungry.
For more, check out which Modern Warfare packs you need to play multiplayer.
Image Credits: Infinity Ward / Activision
