Infinity Ward will finally remedy Modern Warfare's huge install size in next PC update

[Humza]

In context: Besides shooting and reflex skills, 2019's Call of Duty: Modern Warfare eventually became a test of loyalty for PC gamers, raising quite a few eyebrows with its gigantic install size that would ultimately take well over 200GBs of storage space. Hardcore fans of the game were either forced to move other beloved titles from their dedicated gaming SSD to a slower HDD to make room, while many simply chose not to give in to its demands and preserved their libraries (and sanity) in the process. Thankfully, Modern Warfare's next update for PC - possibly the most useful in months - will finally let players uninstall game modes that they no longer play, giving them back some of their valuable disk space.

It's got super-slick animations, top quality gunplay, and one of the best MP/BR modes out there, but Call of Duty: Modern Warfare delivers all that good stuff in exchange for lots of sweet SSD space. A cheaper, more capacious (and slower) HDD is an option, but not an ideal one for the game's huge fanbase of online Multiplayer/Warzone players.

With its Season 6 update, Modern Warfare's already massive install size of ~200GB grew even more where it would no longer fit on a 250GB SSD. Funnily enough, the issue was more concerning for PC players who had bought the entire game with its campaign, co-op, and multiplayer/BR modes, as opposed to the free-to-play Warzone-only players that ended up with having less content to download and install.

The game, now exclusive to the Battle.net launcher, also didn't allow for removing these modes, which meant your completed single-player campaign was just wasting disk space. Console players, on the other hand, were able to download and remove content packs in order to save storage and keep up with the game's regular updates.

Infinity Ward says the new patch update for Modern Warfare coming this week for PC will allow those who own Modern Warfare on PC to uninstall modes they don’t play to free up drive space. https://t.co/goTZfZyYgH

— Call of Duty News (@charlieINTEL) October 12, 2020

Now though, it looks like PC players will be able to do the same as Paul Haile, Modern Warfare's Production Director tweeted that mode-specific uninstall options will be rolled out for the game's PC version. The fix, included in Patch 1.28, is expected to arrive today and will finally let players remove game modes they no longer play to potentially reclaim tens of GBs of disk space.

Nearly a year after MW's release, this patch is also coming suspiciously close to Treyarch's upcoming Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War, and might well be a cheeky way for Activision to make sure players have sufficient storage space for its next CoD game.

Permalink to story.

https://www.techspot.com/news/87081-infinity-ward-finally-remedy-modern-warfare-huge-install.html

 

[franticfrosty]

Kinda doubt that'd shave off more than 20GB lol

 

[Uncle Al]

Never should have happened in the first place .... don't these people run any kind of Quality Control?

 

[QuantumPhysics]

The minimum SSD you should be buying for games nowadays is 2TB. That's $200 - $250 (unless you get suckered into higher performance SSD you don't really need).

4TB and 8TB is where you wanna be.

 

[franticfrosty]

The minimum SSD you should be buying for games nowadays is 2TB. That's $200 - $250 (unless you get suckered into higher performance SSD you don't really need).

4TB and 8TB is where you wanna be.

Soon you'll be needing a 40TB drive just for a few games lol

Imagine in a decade, your son/daughter will be telling you about how the new call of duty ONLY uses 2.4PB

 

[QuantumPhysics]

Soon you'll be needing a 40TB drive just for a few games lol

Imagine in a decade, your son/daughter will be telling you about how the new call of duty ONLY uses 2.4PB

It's these 4K Texture packs forcing us up the storage scale.

Why are they trying to force 8K gaming right now?

If games go 8K, yeah the storage demands will double or triple.

 

[Nobina]

Never should have happened in the first place .... don't these people run any kind of Quality Control?

They do, early adopters. It's quality control that pays you money to test your game. Unfortunately, they're **** at the job.

 

[franticfrosty]

It's these 4K Texture packs forcing us up the storage scale.

Why are they trying to force 8K gaming right now?

If games go 8K, yeah the storage demands will double or triple.

Its not so much that, its the lack of innovation in compression thats making compression seem so bleedingly terrible. If we had new algorithms or methods to do and handle compression/decompression we could in theory see 80% reduction in overall size whilst keeping data integrity and quality.

Compression is a big thing but its seriously in need of innovation to make games go from 200GB to 80GB

 

[m4a4]

Its not so much that, its the lack of innovation in compression thats making compression seem so bleedingly terrible. If we had new algorithms or methods to do and handle compression/decompression we could in theory see 80% reduction in overall size whilst keeping data integrity and quality.

Compression is a big thing but its seriously in need of innovation to make games go from 200GB to 80GB

...Do you know how compression works? The data doesn't magically uncompress itself, you need to spend resources to do so (and generally the more compression, the more resources).
You can only compress dense data so far before you get diminishing returns. And then dealing with heavily compressed data during gameplay is just asking for a performance hit...

 

[ZipperBoi]

Never should have happened in the first place .... don't these people run any kind of Quality Control?

Its not quality control. Many of modern games have large file sizes because of lack of proper compression in not only UHD textures but also in sound files. Uncompressed, raw sound files can be huge and game studios are notorious for moving away from compressing these to save on dev time.

 

[kimo1]

Can't devs just make unwanted things optional? Or can only FitGirl like repackers do that?

 

[franticfrosty]

...Do you know how compression works? The data doesn't magically uncompress itself, you need to spend resources to do so (and generally the more compression, the more resources).
You can only compress dense data so far before you get diminishing returns. And then dealing with heavily compressed data during gameplay is just asking for a performance hit...

I mean... if you read my comment... you'd realise I actually said, and I quote, "
its the lack of innovation in compression thats making compression seem so bleedingly terrible. If we had new algorithms or methods to do and handle compression/decompression we could in theory see 80% reduction in overall size whilst keeping data integrity and quality."

Which in turn, means, yes I do. I've had to review commits of compression code for the company I work at, Which I don't know about you, but your average joe cant do code reviews. Unlike new languages we've not really had anything groundbreaking in terms of compression algorithms or methods.

Who knows, In a few years some kid might find a way to compress files at unforeseen levels whilst retaining quality of assets (without diminishing returns) and do it at an incredible speed whilst system resources aren't getting hammered.

Don't quite get what you didn't understand about my original statement though. I literally couldn't have made myself anymore clearer to be honest.

 

[m4a4]

I mean... if you read my comment... you'd realise I actually said, and I quote, "
its the lack of innovation in compression thats making compression seem so bleedingly terrible. If we had new algorithms or methods to do and handle compression/decompression we could in theory see 80% reduction in overall size whilst keeping data integrity and quality."

Which in turn, means, yes I do. I've had to review commits of compression code for the company I work at, Which I don't know about you, but your average joe cant do code reviews. Unlike new languages we've not really had anything groundbreaking in terms of compression algorithms or methods.

Who knows, In a few years some kid might find a way to compress files at unforeseen levels whilst retaining quality of assets (without diminishing returns) and do it at an incredible speed whilst system resources aren't getting hammered.

Don't quite get what you didn't understand about my original statement though. I literally couldn't have made myself anymore clearer to be honest.

You were suggesting a flat (theoretical) 80% reduction in size without losing quality, but that just isn't realistic for games coming out in the near future. The assets are pretty dense already, how would we compress them down that much without a decompression bottleneck?

Maybe having dedicated decompression cores would help, but we're just moving towards "direct storage". Which, I doubt will have a very heavy compression.

Unless you're just throwing out a "in the next 50 years" statement... which then, that wasn't obvious...

 

[franticfrosty]

You were suggesting a flat (theoretical) 80% reduction in size without losing quality, but that just isn't realistic for games coming out in the near future. The assets are pretty dense already, how would we compress them down that much without a decompression bottleneck?

Maybe having dedicated decompression cores would help, but we're just moving towards "direct storage". Which, I doubt will have a very heavy compression.

Unless you're just throwing out a "in the next 50 years" statement... which then, that wasn't obvious...

I said in theory as we don't exactly know what can happen in the next decade. For all we know 40TB hard drives could be a thing, wasn't long since we thought 500GB hard drives were amazing, and that wasn't even that long ago really.

If I say in theory it means in theory, not put your money on it its guaranteed, in theory I could win the lottery tomorrow.

 

[hahahanoobs]

I had Warzone and MW installed.
Using steps below I uninstalled the Campaign and Spec Ops and went from 226GB to 168GB.

Select Call of Duty: Modern Warfare in Battle.net launcher
Click on the Options menu just below the Call of Duty: Modern Warfare logo
Click on Modify Install and installation popup will appear
Under Game Content select Modify Install
Simply uncheck the content you want to remove
Click Confirm
Click Start Install

 

[sac39507]

Next, do something more aggressive with the cheaters. Anyone denying there are cheaters is a *****. Play core and watch the kill cam

 

[hahahanoobs]

Next, do something more aggressive with the cheaters. Anyone denying there are cheaters is a *****. Play core and watch the kill cam

For me it's the OP weapons and gamebreaking glitches, like the Jak-12 and ground shotguns and shooting through walls with AS-VAL, hiding in walls, killing from under the map, texture glitch, bounty glitch, vehicle glitch.....