Activision explains Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3’s up to 200GB+ file sizes

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 is almost upon us (its campaign early access is upon us for those eager enough to have pre-ordered the game), and system requirements are pointing to an absolutely behemoth install size of more than 200GB in some cases come its full launch next Friday, 10th November – and Activision has now moved to explain what’s going on.

In a statement shared on social media, the publisher blamed Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3’s potentially massive hard drive footprint on an “increased amount of content available Day 1”, which includes open world Zombies, support for items being carried forward from Modern Warfare 2, plus map files for the current the Call of Duty: Warzone.

The good news for anyone staring at their dwindling gigabytes like they’re modelling for Munch’s The Scream is that Modern Warfare 3 appears to offer a decent amount of control over exactly which bits are and are not installed. “You can manage your Call of Duty files in the ‘manage files’ section of the COD HQ launcher menu,” Activision notes. “This includes the ability to uninstall specific content you are not actively playing.”

Based on the options available in today’s campaign early access build, as highlighted over on IGN, it looks like uninstallable component settings get pretty granular, meaning you’ll be able to shave off 8GB here or 35GB over there – and that’s without all the additional content coming on launch day. Additionally, Activision says its “ongoing optimisation efforts” mean final installation sizes should be smaller than the “combined previous Call of Duty experiences”, although that sounds more like a relative win than an absolute one to me.

Right now, some early access players on PS5 are reporting file sizes of almost 240GB once Call of Duty HQ and the campaign are installed, but storage stresses aside, Modern Warfare 3’s early access launch appears to finally be running smoothly following a few teething troubles. Some players were initially greeted with a “disc required” error when trying to play the game, for instance – although Activision has since released an update to fix the issue – and service outages were also reported across multiple titles. These briefly affected campaign early access, account ownership checks, and progression systems, but Activision says the services are now recovering.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3’s campaign early access will continue until the game’s full launch on PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, and PC (via Battle.net and Steam) next Friday, 10th November.