Activision are finally cutting down Call Of Duty's horrendous install sizes for Black Ops 6's release

For years, our PC storage has wobbled and buckled beneath the tyranny of gigantic Call Of Duty installs. Like 13th century peasants straining to convey huge, teetering loads of freshly quarried LMGs, our SSDs cry out for justice. Perhaps scenting imminent rebellion and a mass audience desertion to low-poly shooters with more civilised file sizes, Activision have relented. Future installations of the much-padded FPS will be "smaller and more customised", though in a last cruel stroke of villainy, they want you to download a large update to prepare the ground.

Step one for Activision is "decoupling" the free-to-play live service battle royale Call Of Duty: Warzone from other aspects of the Call Of Duty experience. Makes sense - the Venn diagram of audiences for COD campaigns and Warzone isn't a perfectly circular aiming reticule. "When you purchase an annual title, you will only download the files for that game by default," explains an Activision blog. "On the free-to-play side, players can 'opt-in' to get Call of Duty: Warzone when they're downloading a new annual title or simply download it separately at any point in time."

Step two is "expanding our usage of texture streaming". This will allow the developers to "cycle content that is less frequently used by players to a streaming cache, avoiding the need to download it directly to your device's storage". The trade-off is that "you may see older content that briefly appears at a lower quality until the streaming cache has fully loaded", but you can always pick the new "Optimised" high fidelity graphics quality setting to spruce up the textures faster. There will also be a "Minimal" graphics quality for people who don't have internet bandwidth to spare.

To "pave the way" for all this, Activision want you to download a Call Of Duty update right now, a couple of weeks before the Black Ops 6 beta and a few months ahead of the Black Ops 6 release date. This will "[reorganise] game files and [add] new tech to prep the way for the full player interface arriving in October". It's a big file, but the developers promise that "this initial download will not permanently add the stated file size to the storage space that Call of Duty takes up on your device". Once you've installed it, you can expect Call Of Duty to take up less space over time.

I've fallen away from Call Of Duty for many reasons, but having to shovel hundreds of gigabytes into my PC each time is definitely a prominent one. On the other hand, I'm not confident my internet connection could handle the increased streaming load. What's your mileage?