Modern Warfare 3 devs respond to file size complaints

Following several complaints about Modern Warfare 3 after the campaign’s early access release, the CoD dev team has responded to players explaining the game’s huge file size updates.

While it’s no surprise that today’s games have immense file sizes, Call of Duty‘s latest title, Modern Warfare 3, is no exception. Players have constantly tried to reduce the space they occupy so they can download other games on their consoles.

With the imminent launch of MW3 on November 10, the CoD team has released different updates to prepare for the arrival of the next installment of the franchise, in addition to the release of the campaign’s early access.

However, players quickly noticed that the game files were excessively big, requiring up to 200 GB of free space, which led to complaints. Luckily, the devs decided to address this issue, explaining the reason behind the game’s file sizes.

CoD devs explain MW3 larger file sizes compared to MW2

On an X post, the CoD team provided an update on why MW3’s file sizes are larger than last year’s MW2, saying the “increased amount of content available,” including “open world Zombies, support for item carry forward as well as files for current Call of Duty: Warzone” resulted in making the game’s size bigger.

However, they explained that as part of their “ongoing optimization efforts,” the final installation size of the game on platforms will be “actually smaller than the combined previous Call of Duty experiences.”

#MW3 is almost here. In preparation, we would like to provide an update on file sizes which are larger than last year 👇

This is due to the increased amount of content available Day 1, including open world Zombies, support for item carry forward from #MW2, as well as map files…

— Call of Duty (@CallofDuty) November 2, 2023

With the release of MW3, the entire franchise’s game lineup will be available within a unified application known as “Call of Duty HQ.” This application acts as a library, granting players effortless access to all titles from a centralized location.

In order to smoothly transition all games to the CoD HQ, MW3’s updates will also include the base files for the application itself, which adds to the total file size. Therefore, this could impact MW3 by having a significantly larger file size compared to MW2.

Further, the team also shared that players are able to manage the CoD files in the “manage files” section of the CoD HQ launcher menu, including the possibility to uninstall specific content that isn’t being actively used.

If you’re looking to be fully prepared for Modern Warfare 3‘s launch, be sure to check out everything we know about the game, including all the game modes, weapons, and Operators.