Call Of Duty: Warzone can’t rotate maps because of ‘insane’ download sizes admits dev

metro.co.uk:

An Activision developer has admitted that the absurdly large file sizes of Warzone are preventing it from having multiple maps at a time.

Call Of Duty: Warzone is still one of the most popular games in the world but it has had a lot of problems in recent months, with both cheats and a never-ending series of bugs turning fans against it. But at the root of many of its issues is the ridiculously large file size of the game.

The paid-for Call Of Duty games have a similar problem but for Warzone it doesn’t just put off more casual gamers but it prevents options like being able to choose between different maps.

Every player understands these issues but in a conversation with streamer TeeP, Warzone Live Operations lead Josh Bridge admitted that the file size had now become a major impediment to introducing new content and features.

‘The install and re-install sizes are f insane, right? If we pulled out Caldera and say we’re gonna drop in Verdansk, this could be essentially re-downloading, like, the size of Warzone,’ said Bridge when asked about the possibility of using older Warzone maps in rotation.

‘Every time we’ve done that, we lose players. Because you’re kind of like, ‘I don’t want to re-download that,’ said Bridge.

Officially, Warzone takes up around 92GB on consoles and a massive 175GB of hard drive space on PC. It’s a particular problem on Xbox Series X and PlayStation 5 because the newer, faster SSDs have less capacity than older hard drives.

Every time Warzone adds more content, even if it’s otherwise well received, the file size goes up again, which means that much of the developer’s time is now spent trying to optimise file size.

The file size issue is also likely one of the key reasons behind the development of Warzone