Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War is bringing with it a bit of luggage that first appeared in the Call of Duty: Modern Warfare remaster. The file size is arguably unconscionable to the point that standard PlayStation 4’s are struggling to even update the title due to the colossal file size.
The number of critics that have called out Activision for its absurd filesize is, at this point, nearly innumerable. The clamor resulted in Activision offering gamers the opportunity to piecemeal downloads for the content within the title that people actually wanted to play: a gamer interested only in single player wouldn’t need to handle the monumental downloads for multiplayer, and vice-versa. Overall, however, they’ve apparently had little effect, as Treyarch continues the precedent of file bloat within Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War. Now, former developers are making their voices heard as well.
Former Infinity Ward Creative Strategist and Community Manager, Robert Bowling, took to Twitter to comment on the recent controversy that standard PlayStation 4’s, with 500GB of space, were struggling valiantly to keep Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War updated. The title may very well fail to stay updated in the near future for some players who lack some form of additional external storage for the console. This leads to the concern that gamers are going to be outpriced of a title that has been purchased.
As Bowling states, however, the game does look and play fantastically. Textures are by and large impressive, hosting a wide gamut of locations with a knack for detail and atmosphere in equal measure and scale. Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War’s attention to detail, however, appears to come at the cost of space to the point that it’s becoming unplayable for those that can’t afford ample additional space for developers to toy with.
There is a fine balance that must be struck by developers, with file compression and the intelligent reuse of assets, and inviting players into sprawling vistas. Players sometimes can’t visit these environments when updates are larger than many modern titles available on the market. Taking into account that Call of Duty: Warzone is now a mandatory install in order to play standard multiplayer, roughly a 120GB install, the fact that the size of the title is now regularly making it difficult to play for users that have purchased Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War is increasingly frustrating.
Activision has been silent for its part in the concerns of its audience thus far, aside from offering the piecemealed downloads. Fans continue to hope that the studios involved will be able to figure out more reasonable packages for updates. The title is currently listed within Battle.net as requiring 175GB for all game modes for the PC version.
Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War is available for PC, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, and the Xbox Series X/S.
