COD MW3 Season 1 update download sizes are whack

You’re best served by completely reinstalling sometimes

The Season 1 update for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 is out worldwide and for all platforms – and it has some nasty surprises in store for console players. While some users playing on PS5 and Xbox Series X|S have been reporting a “modest” patch size of between 30 and 40GB, which isn’t unusual for such a substantial update. After all, this is essentially Warzone getting its big MW3-based overhaul.

However, some console players are getting download sizes magnitudes greater than that – there are screenshots out there showing updates with sizes between 100 and 250GB. Some users even reported that they literally don’t have enough free storage space on their console to start the update.

Those download sizes are not a nice present, Mr. Santa / Activision

Call of Duty’s massive game size has been a meme for a while now, but it’s truly getting to a point where it stops being funny.

These storage problems are aggravated by the fact that players for some reason can’t decide on which parts of the game to install anymore. In the past, users could choose not to download and install individual elements of the game like the campaign, co-op content, or Warzone – according to player reports, that option seems to have vanished and they are being forced to download the entirety of the COD HQ, as the developers call the hub where all that content is accessible from.

Usually, we’d recommend uninstalling and completely downloading the game again to fix update troubles, but that solution may not serve anyone’s needs if the issue with players being unable to select individual packages to be installed isn’t resolved.

The Season 1 update seems to be in a bit of a sorry state in general: Since launch a few hours ago, the developers already had to push half a dozen hotfixes to solve various problems and that doesn’t seem to have made a dent in the mountain of issues people have spotted. Among them is that the battle pass doesn’t seem to work at all for some people, while others are still waiting for their premium items included with one of the more expensive editions of the game to be delivered.

COD MW3: What is Tactical Stance and how to use it