We've heard news of games' file sizes ballooning over the last few years due to constant updates and additions, but Epic Games is taking Fortnite in the opposite direction—at least on PC. The game's latest update--which kicks off the new Fortnitemares content--makes massive optimization changes to the game itself, resulting in a much smaller footprint. How much smaller? The game will be about one-third of its previous size.

Please note the patch size will be larger than normal on PC (approx. 27 GB). This is to make optimizations on PC resulting in a massively reduced Fortnite file size (over 60 GB smaller), smaller downloads for future patches, and improved loading performance.
— Fortnite Status (@FortniteStatus) October 20, 2020

The full patch size is about 27GB on PC (ours was actually a little smaller) but despite the hefty download, it reduces the file size by about 60GB once it's fully installed. Epic Games said this will also allow for smaller download sizes on future updates and will also improve loading performance.

For context, we checked our own file size, and the game took up almost 90GB on PC prior to this patch. After the patch, it weighed in at 26.88GB. The wizardry at play here is rather stunning, especially as so many other games are seeing such bloat. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare has grown so large on PC that certain storage devices can't even hold the game when it's the only thing installed.

With current-gen systems also seeing quite large file sizes and the next-gen systems likely to see even bigger ones, it could be a real problem. This is particularly true on PS5, which uses an 825GB NVMe SSD, down from the 1TB HDD on the PS4 Pro.

Speaking of which, Fortnite will be on Xbox Series X and Series S as well as PS5 at launch. It won't be fully upgraded yet, with an Unreal Engine 5 update coming in 2021, but you'll still be able to play with all your friends on other platforms.

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