BREAKING NEWS:
Call of Duty Install Size Backlash: Anti-Trust Concerns Emerge
The gaming universe is abuzz with controversy as the latest title in the popular Call of Duty franchise leaves gamers and regulators alike questioning the spiraling install sizes and potential competition implications.
According to recent observations, the latest installment in the Call of Duty series, "Call of Duty: Shadows Fall," has a whopping 103 GB of data required for installation, casting a shadow of doubt over game developers’ motivations and leading to widespread concern about anti-monopolistic practices.
Industry insider sources have revealed that the increasing enormity of Call of Duty’s memory footprint has raised eyebrows for several reasons:
- Exterior storage costs: With storage prices relatively low, it is difficult to justify needing such massive storage space, thereby raising questions about whether developers are excessively padding their install sizes.
- Consumers’ wallet concerns: Enormous install sizes lead customers to incur significant costs for downloading and storing these massive files, compromising their purchasing power and decision-making criteria.
- Anti-fragmentation tactics: By aggressively pushing storage capacity requirements as high as 103 GB, producers may be aiming to prevent other independent developers from releasing their own similarly-sized titles, thus strengthening their monopoly.
This unsettling trend is causing alarm among avid gamers and market watchdogs concerning the potential anti-competitive effects,
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I have read the news about the 300 gig install size and the Activision "walk back" of this news to it "might" need 300 gigs eventually and don't think this lack of compression has anything to do with necessary file sizing – but is being used as a loophole toward monopolizing hard drive space.
For many gamers, hard drive space and internet speed, caps, etc create a situation where the install size of COD discourages installs of its software, while also preventing installs of competitors. Sure, most can get better internet or an expanded drive if they want – but a likely majority of COD players cannot. I can't help but feel this bloating of install size is just another attempt at forcing players into an attachment to product based on lack of resources – not enjoyment.
There is no damn way a game with a handful of maps needs that much damn space. The "cinematics" being used as an excuse is just that.
Thoughts?
View info-news.info by flyingtheblack
Gamers will do anything except avoid the things they don’t like. It’s amazing
My response to the ever increasing file size was to just delete it. If they can’t sort their shit out then they aren’t getting on my PS5
300 gigs for a handful of maps? That’s just shady. I get that games need space, but this is straight-up monopolizing our hard drives. Not everyone has the luxury of unlimited internet or extra storage, and COD’s bloat feels more like a trap than a necessity. They’re just squeezing out competitors by eating up all our space. It ain’t about better graphics; it’s about locking us into their ecosystem. This isn’t about giving us a better game; it’s about making sure we don’t have room for anything else. Nah, I’m not buying it.
I avoid that problem by not playing or purchasing call of duty
Yeah after the introduction of all these swords, bows and spears I’m kind of done with the game . Activision has stripped the game of any individual merits. Now it’s just garbage from the campaign all through WZ.
Pretty sure that 300gb is for every game they bake into the launcher. If you only install Black Ops 6 (or whatever the latest game is) it won’t be 300gb.
I would have already tried whatever cod just came out on game pass recently if it wasn’t 200 plus gigabytes
So I only have multplayer for mw3 installed, and even though it says it should only be 42gb, it’s taking up 122gb on my drive… just for multiplayer no single player no mw2, no war zone lol
Yeah 300gb is excessive, 150 is excessive but i can live with that
>I have read the news about the 300 gig install size
Did you read the dozens of follow-up articles about how that size was for 3 games (MW2, 3, and Warzone), on top of all languages installed at once, with all DLCs installed?
I just tried it on the Game Pass app. It’s 147.24 GB if I install Call of Duty, MW3 Multiplayer, MW3 Campaign, and the BO6 Beta. Another 23 GB if I want Warzone. There’s almost no chance BO6 is going to be double all of those, combined.
https://www.ign.com/articles/call-of-duty-black-ops-6-isnt-300-gb-after-all
Want to talk about file size hogs? NBA2k24 is 160 GB, Jedi Survivor is 150, Baldur’s Gate 3 is 150, Starfield was 140. Modern games bloating in size is a real problem, but not one exclusive to Call of Duty.
I have Cold War and was going to check out the free beta coming up but then I bought psvr2 and discovered Pavlov is so much better
I’ve been assuming this for a long time now, and not just with CoD. When the file size is that large, you simply run out of space for any other games. It’s a breath of fresh air when a new game like say Men of War 2 comes with a ton of content at like ~25ish gigs.
They should just sell a hard drive with the game already on it. We could then like make an easy system for swapping the drives in and out, put them into plastic shells to protect them and oh wait
It just seems like extremely sloppy development
I agree with what you’re saying, but as others here are chiming in on it also has the opposite effect. People don’t want to dedicate that much hard disk space to a single game (not connection for those with metered internet)
I agree I mean take a look at red Dead 2
the game is an entire map with Hours of cutscenes and graphics far superior to any COD game and it uses 1/3 of the space
same with elden ring being literally 5x smaller in memory required and hundreds of times more content
the biggest solution is to stop buying their trash, somehow despite yearly garbage they are always top 5 selling each year, it’s really sad
With games getting as big as they are, consoles need to stop coming out with 500gb/1tb versions. They’re just not big enough. I would even say 2tb isn’t big enough anymore. Kudos to playstation for at least giving an easy option of expanding storage. Xbox needs to provide a way for us to create our own storage expansion cards, instead of leaving us with having to spend stupid dollars on a proprietary built expansion card.
I personally will not install a game this large if it’s going to take up my entire xbox’s storage. There are better games to play that take up much less space.
Just don’t buy it. It’s literally that easy.
I was enjoying playing CoD for the first time since WW2 because MW3 was on Gamepass. I was having a lot of fun doing some Gunfight and it brought back some nice memories. Last weekend I open the Xbox app and see I have an update for CoD that was like 150GB
I uninstalled the game
I’m on a first gen series S and call of duty would be the only game I can put on my system if I played it
Blizzard used to have compression issues and then bam entire WOW download was super small, cleaned up and expansions weren’t an issue. This was back in what 2012. I think people see what Epic/Fortnite etc does with the constant gig need and no one complaining as a green light.
I’ve deleted all the bs off my drives because 200+g for a game that’ll need multiple installs a year isn’t worth it, plus the games blow.
I hate that i have to be CoD’s side but you must have misunderstood the news you read because even Activision’s own website stated that users can uninstall parts of the games that they don’t want in order to save on the CoD launcher’s overall file size.
The launcher currently includes CoD MW2 (DMZ), Warzone, MW3 (MWZ), and will later include BO6 (Zombies) once it is released.
All the content from each of those games can also be installed/uninstalled at the user’s demand.
So if you don’t want the campaigns, multi-player, warzone, zombies, or the HD texture packs, you can uninstall them.
Should the user not want to pick and choose and have all the games, then the launcher will reach over 300GB
https://www.callofduty.com/blog/2023/11/call-of-duty-modern-warfare-iii-warzone-hq-game-launcher-intel
I get the idea but we don’t have to install that bullshit so you can’t really get them on anything.
Yeah I’ll just stick to playing MW2 (the old one) thanks
Can you care to explain how increasing the barrier to entry to selling your product helps CoD?
This is nonsense, utter nonsense.
cod couldn’t meet the criteria for antitrust, no way. because there are a bajillion other shooter games. you don’t have to play cod, it’s not an OS or some software that is critically needed for business or other reasons.
you do realize you can just play other games and don’t need to give activision any of your money right?
I have a solution for it, STOP playing COD
Same game every year just like Fifa/EA FC
Does the PS5 need a shitload of free space to update or did they finally fix it?
I have to leave like 100GB free on my PS4 in case GT7 gets a 125MB update
Call of Duty 2 is still like 4gb if you want to play a good game.
Animal crossing took up a whole memory card back in the day. It seems insane, but I’m sure people are addicted enough to upgrade or uninstall other content. It’s not optimal and it sucks, but as long as it’s a nonissue for the majority and doesn’t cost them money don’t expect anything to change
Well this is dumbest thing I’ve read on Reddit today……So far.
I’ve got some friends who just flat out won’t play other games due the fact they don’t have space for them without deleting another game (it’s almost always cod taking up a majority of their hard drive) so it’s definitely been a deciding factor for some people
I don’t think it’s anti-trust, just poor design. It’s not like other games don’t exist. It’s not a system requirement to have COD. They just launched an unoptimized game and people are handing over money for a poorly designed install. Yes, it takes up a lot of space, but I don’t think it’s a big brain conspiracy to take over computers. It’s a small brain design that could cost them customers.
Large storage seems to have made optimization an afterthought these days. Back in the days of NES, people really needed to be creative because there was barely enough space on a cartridge to fit enough audio and visual assets (even in 8bit) to make compelling games with decent entertainment value.
As a game dev I really struggle to understand how install sizes get this big. My first thought was textures and audio files. But even if you went with 8k or 16k textures there are other optimization issues with textures that big and even images that big shouldn’t be getting into the hundreds of GB range. Maybe the 60GB if literally every unique item used oversized textures like that. Audio files can be a large part of it with them trying to have more customization in the different operators and more variation in gun sounds and stuff.
I dunno, I’d be very curious to see a break down of where that data is coming from and for what.
Interestingly, the same sort of thing is happening in our stores. I saw a video the other day about the “big 3” monopolizing shelf space in Walmart and it checks out. You can look at any shelf in Walmart and the outside eye level shelf spaces are all occupied by the big 3 corporations. The lower you get on the rack, the more mom and pop stuff you’ll find.
We all know part of this, but the idea that only 3 companies own almost all of the prime shelf space in brick and mortar is a big deal these days. And it seems very similar to what you’re saying here: occupying my disk space.
Sort of this “what can we force on them” behavior.
It’s disgusting, man. I’m almost 40. I remember Piggly wiggly and Walmart when the customer was always right. I **know** this isn’t how business operated for hundreds of years prior to now. So what gives?