Call of Duty launcher put on a space-saving diet, as Modern Warfare 2 and Modern Warfare 3 go back to standalone downloads

Call of Duty launcher put on a space-saving diet, as Modern Warfare 2 and Modern Warfare 3 go back to standalone downloads

If you’ve installed a Call of Duty game at any point in the past few years, odds are you know the pain. You want to stick one thing, the thing you want to play, on your drive, but thanks to the series’ launcher, end up accidentally sticking somewhere in the region of 200 to 300MB of various Call of Duty stuff onto your PC.

Well as of today, the massive number you’re quoted’ll be slightly less beefy, with Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 (the ones from the 2020s, not the classics bearing the same names) set to be banished from HQ and back to standalone downloads.

This change’ll be taking place on July 29th at 5PM BST / 9AM PT / 12PM ET. You’ll have to re-download Modern Warfare 2 and 3 to play them if you’ve already got them installed as part of HQ, with Activision adding that “legacy content related to MWII and MWIII modes within the main Call of Duty install will be automatically removed on August 7th to free up storage space.”

Operators and weapons from the two shooters that also pop up in Warzone won’t be affected. Naturally, what looks potentially like a bit of slimming in preparation for the launcher swallowing up Black Ops 7 later this year has a lot of codders on the socials asking whether this might be the beginning of the end for a launcher install that can be so big even your average NBA 2K looks titchy by comparison.

Look, there was a reason HQ was brought in back in 2022, with the stated goal being to give folks a launcher that’d ironically actually help them save hard drive space. The launcher’s not endeared itself to players much, though, despite Activision making an effort to bring down the initial ton of stuff it asks you to download right off the bat, by finally “decoupling” free-to-play battle-royale Warzone from everything else.

Sure, once that initial install’s done, you can head into the settings or DLC files and manually uninstall any bits you don’t want in order to get the file size down, but just not having to worry about being served extra bits instead would be nice. But it’s easy for the uninitiated to end up with something like the 228.4GB install I parked on my PS5 went I went to play Black Ops 6, something I’d definitely have been narked about if I didn’t just use the console for the rare game I can’t get on PC.

Anyway, at least you won’t have to worry about that if you want to replay Modern Warfare 2 and Modern Warfare 3 from now on. I’d wager HQ’s not going anywhere so long as Activision still want a means to promote Warzone and their latest yearly release to folks playing the most recent Calls of Duty. But even if this is just a changing of the guard, we can enjoy less install anxiety while it lasts.

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