Modern Warfare 2 players forced to download 100GB update to continue playing

The Call of Duty series is no stranger to taking up massive amounts of hard drive space and the recent Modern Warfare entries are no exception.

Especially in recent years, the likes of Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War, Vanguard and Modern Warfare II (2022) have taken well over 100GB of storage space, in some cases, 150GB to 200GB depending on what content you have installed for each game.

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Balancing hard drive space is an ongoing struggle in modern gaming. Sure we could just delete loads of games or buy additional storage, but that’s not always an ideal scenario and with the release of Modern Warfare III this week, it's not helping matters either.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II has essentially become a launcher for the series and as such, MWII players were greeted yesterday with an update for Modern Warfare III which exceeds 100GB. I’ll say that again, an update that weighs in at over 100GB! This seems quite baffling for a campaign that can be finished within a few hours. Perhaps the requirement for multiplayer and Zombies is more than what we think?

Yesterday I thought I’d have a quick blast on some Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II multiplayer before the new remastered maps arrive with MWIII. Unfortunately, that plan was foiled when I was greeted with an update requirement of 108GB on my PlayStation 5. I wasn't happy, to say the least. Worst still, even if you don’t buy MWIII, as an owner of MWII you’d still be required to download the massive update, as vented by Reddit users.

“PSA: In order to play MWII, you’ll need to download the 103GB update which adds MWIII,” said a Reddit user kicking off the discussion on the thread. “So you will not be able to play MWII (online) without downloading the 103GB update. F****** Activision.” As you can imagine, the thread is full of many gamers not happy about this requirement, and who would blame them?

The only plus side is that you can uninstall certain components of the game such as the campaign, multiplayer and other features/modes. I’ve done exactly that with MWII and MWIII on my PS5, but it is still taking up over 246GB.

I’d like to say that whoever is in charge of the Modern Warfare II and III updates will find a better way to optimise the storage requirements. However, considering this has been an issue for a number of years, I wouldn't cling to that hope.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III is out on 10 November for PC, PlayStation and Xbox.