Epic's Fortnite now requires less than 30GB to install on PC following the battle royale's 14.40 update. This is quite significant, given gamers needed to have 90GB in free space to install the game.
This reduction marks a cut of over two-thirds of a game that had bloated into a selfish hard drive space possessor. The update, which dropped on Wednesday morning, was a pretty big one. But at approximately 27GB, it must have come as a relief to players as the patch appears to be poised to do a bit of cleaning up, thereby reducing Fortnite's file size.
"Please note the patch size will be larger than normal on PC (approx. 27 GB)," an announcement from Fortnite Status reads. "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."
PC Gamer's Natalie Clayton reported having recently uninstalled the game to free up HD space and confirmed a download size of 26.3GB - she added it took up roughly 31.5GB of space upon reinstallation.
The update also promises a reduction in loading times, another welcome bit of news.
Fortnite didn't start out as a big game and, back in 2018, only took up 18GB of space. The file size ballooned to 90GB on the back of constant updates and additions. Last week's update brought Galactus to the game as part of a collaboration with Marvel that may or may not have done it some good. A number of outfits, events, gliders, and various cosmetics saw the game go from a mere 18GB to 90GB, which was admittedly a bit much as there's only a single island.
Players can also expect Ghostbusters skins for Halloween and we're certain the holiday will prompt some more cool content. Of course, a 2020 Halloween event is already poised to be part of the celebration.
This latest move by the game's developer is a huge step in the right direction and will be greatly appreciated by users with limited disk space.
Source: Fortnite Status