Activision is finally doing something about Call of Duty’s giant downloads

Call of Duty games have famously giant file sizes, but ahead of the October 25th launch of Black Ops 6, Activision is going to make some changes so that Call of Duty titles don’t take up as much space on your hard drive — including separating Warzone from the default download for the annual games.

The default separation of Warzone is happening soon: on August 21st, alongside the launch of Season 5 Reloaded. As part of that, when you download an annual Call of Duty game, you’ll also be able to opt in to also download Warzone if you want. And if you just want to download Warzone, that will still be an option as well.

With Season 5 Reloaded, Activision also says that it is going to rely more on texture streaming, and players will be able to pick between “optimized” (the default) or “minimal” streaming. In mid-October, Activision plans to introduce a new user interface for browsing your Call of Duty games, too.

But to prepare for these changes, Activision says you’re going to have to download a big update as part of the Season 5 rollout that will reorganize game files and add new tech “to prep the way for the full player interface.” After that update is done, Activision says that Call of Duty’s footprint will go down because of the “file optimizations.” (PlayStation 5 players will have to download a series of updates because of “differences in file organization.”)

Because of the updates, Activision says that Black Ops 6 will be a “smaller download at launch than Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III.” The company doesn’t have a specific download size for Black Ops 6 yet, but it says that the estimated file sizes shown on preorder listings don’t represent the “download size or disk footprint” for the game. (Activision has already had to clarify this after an Xbox store page listing showed a jaw-dropping 309.85GB download.)

Activision will also be hosting a Black Ops 6 open beta that starts on August 30th.