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Call Of Duty’s Insane 100GB Reduction Is Good, Right?

Originally posted on Total Apex Gaming
By Gabriel Montenegro | Last updated Sep 7, 2025 1:37 PM ET

When I excitedly bought Call of Duty Black Ops 6 after not playing the games since Black Ops 2, I was DUMBFOUNDED by the insane file size. My reaction was “Is this a joke?” This is made more ridiculous when you note that a game like Horizon: Forbidden West, a single-player open-world adventure game, comes in at around 85GB on PS5. So what’s your excuse, C.O.D.?

Well, according to X user PlayStation Game Size, a reliable source that tracks these things religiously, Call of Duty is preparing to shed a whopping 100GB in an upcoming update. Yes, you read that right. One-Hundred Gigabytes. Makes you wonder what kind of nonsense is making up the bulk of that storage space, doesn’t it?

Let’s Hope The Numbers Don’t Lie

Here’s where things get interesting. The current Call of Duty installation on PS5 sits at a hefty 126.224GB, which is already enough to make your console’s storage drive weep quietly in the corner. But with update 01.080.000, that number is supposedly dropping to just 25.377GB.

Let me just pause here for dramatic effect. 25GB. For Call of Duty. In 2025. That’s not an insignificant drop, and it’s almost unbelievable, right?

If you’re a PS4 player, not to worry! You’re not left out of this storage miracle either, as the game size for you will drop from 81GB down to 62GB. Sure, it’s not as dramatic as the PS5 reduction, but hey, every gigabyte counts when you’re juggling a dozen games on that aging hard drive.

How Is This Even Possible?

Now, before you start questioning whether Activision has discovered some kind of digital compression magic, let’s talk about what’s actually happening here. The secret sauce appears to be making the multiplayer mode optional. According to PlayStation Game Size, the multiplayer component weighs in at 38.751GB and will become an optional download with update 1.80. Which is an interesting way to go about it, for sure. But why not the other way around? Or, crazy idea, make each of the three major components able to be individually downloaded? I may be in the minority here, but does anyone actually care about Call of Duty campaigns? Am I the only one who, upon finishing the install, jumps RIGHT into multi-player?

Some folks may just want to mess around in Zombies mode, stick to Warzone, and sure, perhaps play through the campaign. Making multiplayer optional is an interesting way to go about it, but I feel that if it’s not the same with the other aspects of the game, then it comes off as simply lazy. Real talk, gamers, the MAJORITY of Call of Duty players are on multiplayer and zombies. I mean, that’s where all the micro-transactions are, so am I wrong here?

An Unnecessary Problem

Image from Black Ops 6 courtesy of Treyarch

Call of Duty’s bloated file sizes have been a running joke (and genuine frustration) for years. We’ve watched these games grow from reasonable 50GB installations to absolute storage monsters that make SSDs shudder every year. Players have been complaining about this issue since at least 2019, and it’s only gotten worse with each successive release.

The fact that Activision is somewhat addressing this complaint borders on being irritating. It’s like watching your least favorite relative suddenly develop self-awareness—you’re happy it happened, but you’re also wondering “What the hell took you so long, Gramps?”

The Broader Discussion: Poor Optimization

Game developers have gotten increasingly lazy about optimization, seemingly operating under the assumption that players will just buy bigger hard drives to accommodate their bloated releases. Maybe seeing Call of Duty, arguably one of the most storage-hungry franchises out there, commit to dramatic size reductions will inspire others to follow suit. A far reach, I know, but I like to at least try to keep hope alive.

This doesn’t even touch on the advent of these supposedly “AAA” developers releasing clearly rushed content with the argument that they can provide updates as the games go live. At this point, it’s widely accepted (unfortunately, so) that every new game, especially multiplayer games, is essentially getting free game testers by just shoving something stable enough to go live.

Of course, we should probably temper our expectations a bit. This information comes from database entries rather than official announcements, so there’s always a chance something could change before the update actually rolls out. Would we really be surprised if it were a 100GB INCREASE instead of a reduction?

What’s Next for the Franchise?

While we’re celebrating this potential storage victory, it’s worth noting that Call of Duty Black Ops 7 is still scheduled to launch in November 2025. And in typical greedy Activision fashion, they’ve already confirmed that content from Black Ops 6, including operators and weapons, won’t carry over to the next game, which is an abhorrent practice that blatantly disrespects its players’ time investment. But that’s for another article.

But hey, who cares about the players, right? We have to think about the CEOs! Oh, whatever would they do without their expensive suits and gold-leaf toilet paper? So insensitive!

This article first appeared on Total Apex Gaming and was syndicated with permission.

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