Today, Call of Duty: Warzone debuts on Steam, in the form of Call of Duty: Warzone 2.0. However, that debut comes with some strange conditions attached to it.

The original Call of Duty: Warzone was essentially added onto Call of Duty: Modern Warfare during Season 2. If you were playing on console, or used the Blizzard client on Windows, you could play the game on its own, but Activision Blizzard opted not to bring it to Steam. Call of Duty: Warzone is free to play, and will continue to be playable after Call of Duty: Warzone 2.0’s release. It will actually be going offline for a period estimated from November 16 to 28, 2022, and will afterwards be playable in a revised, updated form, called Call of Duty: Warzone Caldera.

Now, with Call of Duty: Warzone 2.0’s coming launch, preloads are available on Steam’s client. However, if you own Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, you may be surprised to see that it has automatically preloaded Call of Duty: Warzone 2.0 for you, without asking.

Either way, Call of Duty: Warzone 2.0’s preload will occupy 23 GB on Steam, and 17 GB on Blizzard’s client. However, you shouldn’t be complacent with your storage. The system requirements page has a listed 125 GB minimum storage requirement. It is likely the preload only consists of part of game files. When Season 1 data also becomes available for preload, also arriving before the game’s actual launch date, it may fill out the rest of the anticipated 102 GB download. It’s possible that Season 1 will be available by later today.

We had previously reported that a Microsoft Store data aggregator found the game comes in at 115.62 GB on Xbox. In fact, there isn’t much clarity on how much storage the game will take on either Xbox or PlayStation consoles. It may be possible that the PlayStation 5 version will utilize its specialized data compression technology to shrink that storage size, that only owners of that console will benefit from.

Either way, expectations are high for Call of Duty Warzone’s debut on Steam, coming as Activision Blizzard was acquired by Microsoft. While we don’t know if that deal will push through yet, we can see, the company is already making changes to how they do business.

Call of Duty: Warzone 2.0. will be released on November 16, 2023, for PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X, Xbox Series S, and PC on both Steam and Blizzard’s dedicated Windows client. You can learn more about the launch date here.

Source: PC Gamer