Why Do Modern Games Take Hours to Install? The Size Explosion

You buy the game at 7pm, dreaming of a quick session before bed. The download says 140 GB. Your connection manages 60 Mbps on a good day. The progress bar crawls, the “ready to play” tease mocks you, and by midnight you are watching 67% with the hollow realisation that modern gaming has a hidden loading screen: the install itself. Why do games that fit on a Blu-ray now take hours to download and install? The answer is a collision of 4K assets, audio bloat, patch culture, and the physics of your own hardware.

Games got enormous: the asset explosion

The core reason is simple: modern games contain vastly more data than their predecessors. A PlayStation 3-era blockbuster was 8–20 GB; today’s equivalents routinely exceed 100 GB, with some (Call of Duty titles infamously) pushing past 200 GB. Three drivers dominate:

4K textures: a single high-resolution texture can be tens of megabytes, and open-world games contain tens of thousands. Higher resolutions quadruple texture data with each step (1080p → 4K is 4× the pixels). Developers increasingly ship multiple texture packs for different quality settings, all downloaded regardless.

Uncompressed audio: modern games ship with hours of dialogue in multiple languages, high-fidelity sound effects, and orchestral scores. Audio is often stored uncompressed (or lightly compressed) to avoid CPU decompression overhead during play — a trade of download size for runtime performance. Duplicate audio across languages multiplies the cost; some games let you uninstall language packs you don’t need.

Duplicated data for speed: on old hard drives, developers duplicated assets across the disc so the slow read head never had to seek far — the same rock texture stored dozens of times. This “seek optimisation” bloats installs enormously and is a legacy of HDD-era design that SSDs don’t need, though many engines still do it.

The patch problem

Launch-day games are rarely finished anymore. Day-one patches of 20–50 GB are routine, and live-service games accumulate patches that can exceed the original install. Worse, many patch systems download entire changed files rather than deltas — a 2 GB change to a 40 GB archive means downloading 40 GB. Some launchers are smarter (Steam’s delta patching is relatively efficient); others are not. The result: the “install” is really download-plus-patch-plus-verify, each stage adding time.

Download versus install: two different bottlenecks

“Installing” is actually two processes, and either can be the bottleneck. Downloading is limited by your broadband speed and the server’s throughput — 140 GB at 60 Mbps takes over 5 hours mathematically (140 × 8,000 Mb ÷ 60 Mbps ÷ 3,600 ≈ 5.2 hours), before overhead. Congested launch-day servers, Wi-Fi losses, and ISP throttling stretch it further.

Installing/decompressing is limited by your storage and CPU. Modern launchers download compressed data and decompress it during or after download — a CPU-intensive process. On older CPUs or nearly-full drives, decompression crawls. Consoles with fast SSDs (PS5, Xbox Series) decompress via dedicated hardware blocks, which is why their installs feel faster than equivalent PC downloads. A full drive also fragments the process: SSDs slow significantly when over ~90% full, so the last 10% of an install on a packed drive is disproportionately slow.

How to make it faster (and less painful)

Pre-load. Most major releases offer pre-loading days before launch — the files download encrypted and unlock at release. This converts launch-day waiting into background downloading you never notice.

Go wired. Downloads over Wi-Fi lose significant throughput to interference and overhead; Ethernet consistently delivers closer to your line’s rated speed. Schedule big downloads overnight when the network is idle and servers are less congested.

Manage storage proactively. Keep 15–20% of your SSD free, uninstall games you are not playing (your saves live in the cloud), and on PC, install launchers’ download caches on your fastest drive. Uninstall unused language packs where the option exists.

Choose what you download. Many modern titles offer modular installs — multiplayer only, campaign only, high-res texture packs as optional. Downloading only what you’ll play can halve the wait. And consider whether your hardware is due for renewal: how long a laptop should last before replacing applies equally to gaming PCs and consoles feeling their age. For general storage hygiene across devices, freeing up storage without deleting photos covers the same principles on mobile.

The BBC has covered the ballooning size of game installs as part of gaming’s infrastructure story, and Which?‘s broadband testing shows how far real-world download speeds fall short of advertised rates during peak hours — the other half of the waiting equation.

The bottom line

Modern games take hours to install because 4K textures, uncompressed multi-language audio, HDD-era data duplication, and massive patches have pushed installs past 100 GB, while download speeds, server congestion, and decompression bottlenecks govern how fast those gigabytes arrive and unpack. Pre-load releases, download over Ethernet overnight, keep SSDs under 90% full, and install only the modules you’ll play — the wait is structural, but it is manageable.

Frequently Asked Questions

Why are modern games over 100GB?

4K textures (tens of thousands per game), uncompressed audio in multiple languages, and duplicated data inherited from hard-drive-era optimisation. Each factor multiplies the others in open-world titles.

How long should a 100GB game take to download?

At 60 Mbps, roughly 3.7 hours mathematically — longer with overhead, Wi-Fi losses, and server congestion. At 500 Mbps, under 30 minutes. Your actual speed during peak hours is often well below the advertised rate.

What is pre-loading a game?

Downloading the encrypted game files days before release, so they unlock instantly at launch. It converts launch-day waiting into unnoticed background downloading — always pre-load when the option exists.

Why do game patches take so long to install?

Many patch systems re-download entire changed archives rather than just the differences, and decompression is CPU-intensive. A “small” patch can mean re-downloading tens of gigabytes on inefficient update systems.

Does an SSD make game installs faster?

Yes, significantly — modern consoles use dedicated decompression hardware with their SSDs, and PCs with fast NVMe drives install markedly quicker than those on old hard drives. Keep SSDs under 90% full for best performance.

Why do games need to “copy” after downloading on PlayStation?

PlayStation downloads compressed data, then copies and decompresses it during installation — the “copying” phase that seems to take forever. It is limited by the console’s storage write speed and CPU decompression. Later system software improved this significantly, but large games on external drives still crawl through the copy phase.

Can I play a game while it is still downloading?

Sometimes — many launchers and consoles support “ready to start” partial installs that let you play early sections while the rest downloads. It works well for linear campaigns but can cause issues in open-world games if you outrun the downloaded data. When in doubt, wait for 100%.

Will games keep getting bigger?

Probably, but the rate may slow: smarter compression, modular installs, and SSD-optimised engines (which do not need HDD-era data duplication) all reduce bloat. 8K assets could reverse the trend if they become standard — the next visual leap will cost gigabytes, as every previous one has.

Does uninstalling games I do not play help?

Yes, significantly: keeping SSDs under 90% full maintains write speeds, cloud saves preserve your progress, and reinstalling later is just a background download. Treat installed games as a rotating library, not a permanent collection, and installs stay fast.