In brief: We're living in an age where video game installation sizes are so big that some can't even fit on smaller SSDs anymore – we're looking at you, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare. However, every now and then, a developer manages to optimize their game so well that they actually reduce the file size -- substantially. That's precisely what Epic accomplished with Fortnite today.
For those who haven't been keeping up with Fortnite news, the game recently reached the 90GB download size mark on PC. That still pales in comparison to the likes of Modern Warfare, or even singleplayer PC releases like Red Dead Redemption 2 (which was a whopping 150GB), but it's not insignificant.
Fortunately, as we mentioned a moment ago, Epic has managed to reverse this trend for Fortnite. In a Twitter post published yesterday, the company revealed that, due to "optimizations" on PC, Fortnite's file size is now "over 60GB smaller."
Please note the patch size will be larger than normal on PC (approx. 27 GB). This is to make optimizations on PC resulting in a massively reduced Fortnite file size (over 60 GB smaller), smaller downloads for future patches, and improved loading performance.
--- Fortnite Status (@FortniteStatus) October 20, 2020
That's a massive file size reduction, and it should lead to faster (and smaller) patch downloads in the future, as well as speedier loading times. Unfortunately, there is a bit of a trade-off -- the most recent patch is significantly bigger than usual, coming in at 27GB in total.
Still, most players will probably be willing to accept a larger patch now if it means smaller patches later. You can download Fortnite for Windows, macOS and Android from TechSpot Downloads.