Fortnite’s PC players will find a “larger than normal” update this morning, as the game moved to v14.40. today at 04:00 AM ET, in preparation for the Fortnitemares 2020 event.
The new update will kick start the Halloween festivities a little earlier this year, with Midas making a return to the game, as well as pumpkin rocket launchers and another in-game concert. In between updating Fortnite across all platforms for the annual event, Epic has decided now is the time to address an issue that has been creeping into the game for PC players: the increasing size of updates to the game.
Announced via Twitter, Epic confirmed that PC users will notice that v14.40 will be around 27 GB, which puts it 7 GB higher than the latest update to v14.00 and almost double what the size of the last update was for Nintendo Switch and Xbox One users. However, the larger update will result in “smaller downloads for future patches, and improved loading performance”, not to mention that the optimizations will bring down the overall size of the game for PC players, bringing the overall size of the game down by over 60 GB, which would keep Fortnite away from our list of the biggest games on PC.
Fortnite has slowly been getting bigger and bigger, as more features have been added over the last few years, with tie-ins with mainstream media continuing this season with Marvel, along with dataminers discovering Ghostbusters skins in the latest patch, but in just six months the install size on PC has blown from 45 GB at the start of Chapter 2 Season 2, to the 90 GB required for Chapter 2, Season 4. Compare that with the size in 2018, where the game needed only 30 GB of storage space, and it becomes clear that without this intervention from Epic that number would’ve carried on increasing in future updates.
Fortnite isn’t the only game looking to free up some space on gaming PCs, with first-person shooter Call of Duty: Modern Warfare adding the ability to uninstall specific segments of the game, a feature that console players have had for a while now. Bigger file sizes can lead to players having to choose which games to keep installed on their systems, so keeping that figure as low as possible is the best way to keep players on side, going into a holiday season.
While attention in the game will shift to Fortnitemares 2020 naturally, Season 4 is still in full swing, with the Marvel-themed Season coming to an end soon. This week’s challenges include eliminations at Slurpy Swamp and grabbing a hold of Silver Surfer’s board and using it in a match.
Source: Fortnite Updates/Twitter
