Call of Duty’s endless appetite for more disk space every time a new update gets released is getting too much to handle. The first set of players will recall the system requirements by Activision for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare. Even a minimum of 175GB of free disk space was considered outrageous. In August 2020, another fat update was pushed needing more than 200GB disk space. Some of its updates for PC managed to touch 50GB.
However, with the recent Modern Warfare Season 6 update, all hell broke loose. Brought to light by @BattleNonSense, a 256GB SSD has fallen short to hold the latest size of Modern Warfare update. Subsequently, it does not allow to update too if you are installing on PC. Check out the tweet from frustrated COD: Modern Warfare player
MW players have started a discussion thread on Reddit and several other forums. The comments bring to light the rising resentment amongst PC players. This is especially true for those who have limitations when it comes to hardware and topped up by a weak connection.
With every update eating away resources, players in the community have renewed complaints about the inability to uninstall selective game parts. They want a feature somewhat similar to available on Xbox One console and Steam. The players can install/uninstall Call of Duty: Modern Warfare and Battle Royale Warzone on the consoles.
They are treated as different entities. On PC, it is not provisioned in the current Battle.Net launcher. It has the option to have a different “version” of a game though. From the launcher, one should have the option to select Single-player, Multiplayer, or Warzone as well.
If you only want to play Warzone, in that case there a workaround to the the 256GB SSD problem. Don’t buy Modern Warfare. However, if you buy MW, it forces an install. Warzone files take up 100GB of hard disk whereas SP, MP and COOP stuff is around 150GB size.
With the increasing sharing of the burden on 256GB SSD, PC players are again raising their voices. They want Activision Devs to split different games like Campaign, Multiplayer, Spec Ops, Warzone. They want the option to uninstall parts of the game they don’t want to play and thereby shed some weight.
To be ahead in the competition, the thumb rule followed by the most popular games is that they are always accessible. They know, the moment a new shiny game comes in the market, gamers will uninstall their game to try the new one. As they increase system requirements, there will be fewer people who have lesser leanings to play.
For COD to stay in competition it certainly can’t dream of fighting popular games through storage size. The always increasing CoD’s size to date has been offset by its loyal player base. However, it cannot be glued for long. The devs need to optimize their game and high-quality non-repeating texture across the board before packaging it. The devs need to take a lesson from what Bungie did for Destiny 2.
Till the time devs find some permanent solution to the ever-burgeoning 256GB SSD requirement, it is time to do a memory upgrade and rethink building a PC.
