Call of Duty: Modern Warfare just got an update, patch 1.23.0. The patch adds the newly increased 200 player count to Warzone’s Verdansk map, but it also balloons Modern Warfare’s install footprint to well over 200 gigabytes. The game may not even fit on a 250 GB SSD anymore.
Shortly after the update, Redditor vanillaricethrowaway posted a screengrab of the Modern Warfare install folder on their PC, which showed a total size of 209 GB. That’s even bigger than initial estimates for Modern Warfare + Warzone on PC, which put the total install size at around 197 GB. When Warzone arrived, it wound up needing less space than anticipated, but the game has added new modes and other additional content with its battle passes, and the amount of space it takes up now has officially become enormous.
To verify, I checked my own Modern Warfare folder, and it’s even worse: Modern Warfare is taking up 235 GB on my older HDD. That’s a bit on the excessive side, even now as storage typically comes in terabyte-plus sizes.
Games are getting bigger across the board, but Modern Warfare is far beyond just about everything else. Even Destiny 2, with all the additional Shadowkeep content installed, hasn’t yet cracked the 100 GB mark on PC (despite early estimates of 165 GB).
The Reddit thread offers several theories as to why Call of Duty: Warzone takes up so much space, most having to do with uncompressed data being easier to process on lower-end systems. Whatever the reason, though, it’s forcing me – and probably plenty of other players – to think hard about how I want to budget my storage space.
Of course, if you’re sticking with it, you’ll want to know about the best Warzone assault rifle, and the best Warzone loadouts – and we’ve got you covered. Can you run it? Take the Call of Duty Warzone system requirements test at PCGameBenchmark.