Just a couple of days before its launch on November 16, Call of Duty: Warzone 2 has arrived on Steam and launched a pre-load option for the game. But there’s a notable catch.
If you don’t own Modern Warfare 2, you should be clear to pre-load Warzone 2.0 on Steam. It’s a sensible 23GB at the moment, but I have a feeling that could expand with some further update at launch.
But players who do own Modern Warfare 2 on Steam are reporting some problems downloading the update, apparently because Warzone will arrive within Modern Warfare 2 as the “Season 01” update, which isn’t available yet. When you click the big green “Pre-Load Game” button on Steam, it launches Modern Warfare 2 in Steam, seemingly because both games will be rolled together into a single platform, accessible on the “Call of Duty HQ” menu. I don’t know when the Season 01 update will be pre-loadable, but I’ve emailed Activision Blizzard to ask, and I’ll update this page if I receive more information.
Also worth noting: the listed system requirements for Warzone on Steam are identical to that of Modern Warfare 2. That makes it less clear exactly how much hard drive footprint the unzipped download will take up. The system requirements page lists 125GB, but the Warzone pre-load is much smaller than that. Over on Battle.net, the “Base Game” and Warzone sum to a 17.4GB download.
If this is a bit confusing, we might actually have it better off than our console comrades, where it sounds like tracking down the Warzone 2 PS5 preload, or the Xbox one, is a bit of a byzantine process.
Can anyone preload warzone on steam?November 14, 2022
can anyone else on steam not preload warzone 2.0?? i clicked the checkmark for it in my dlc section for mw2 and it just says it’s 24 bytes big which i know is bullshit since they said already it’s 100gbNovember 14, 2022
anyone else unable to preload warzone 2 on steam? it just boots up mw2 for some reason and won’t download warzone 2#mw2 #warzone2 #ModernWarfare2November 14, 2022
Wait I don’t understand @charlieINTEL so that means what i downloaded just now (mw2 pack 45.7gb + wz2 pack 2.9gb) is all there is? Not even up to 50gb? Or will there be an additional download come the 16th?November 14, 2022
(Image credit: Activision)
This marks Warzone’s debut on Steam. The game debuted on PC on Battle.net in March 2020, but ahead of Activision Blizzard’s expected acquisition by Microsoft, the company has returned to Steam in the last month, also releasing Crash Bandicoot 4: It’s About Time on Steam in October, Activision’s first game on the platform since 2019.
A final note about Warzone on Steam: Warzone will actually block you from pre-loading the game until you have the newest drivers installed, which I had to do before attempting.