Fortnite now takes up way, way less space for PC gamers. Where just a few days ago you needed over 90GB of storage space to fit the game on to your system, Epic has slashed that by two thirds, cutting it down to just over 30GB when fully installed.
Fortnite is a relatively lightweight game in terms of system demands and once upon a time, storage space. As PCGamer reports, when it was first released in 2017 it took up a mere 18GB of hard drive space. But over the years, as more features and content have been added, the experience has grown more hefty and bloated, to the point where it demanded almost 100GB of room just to be playable. In an ironic fashion, the 14.4 update for the game that lowers its install size is a monster one in and of itself -- 27GB in total. But its a massive spring clean of a patch that removes everything unnecessary in the game and makes it far leaner in the process.
Boo.
v14.40 arises tomorrow, October 21. Downtime starts at approx. 04:00 AM ET (08:00 UTC). pic.twitter.com/60MVUVJsZC— Fortnite Status (@FortniteStatus) October 20, 2020
With the update applied, new and existing players can expect to only need 31.5GB of space once its fully installed. The download for the game is only 26.3GB too, so Fortnite is now not only much lighter on your hard drive, but demands far less bandwidth to download in a timely manner, helping people get into a game much quicker than before.
As hefty was Fortnite was before this update though, it's far from the biggest game out there. Games like Gears of War 4 broke ground when they breached 100GB a few years ago, but today, games like Call of Duty: Modern Warfare can reach as high as 200GB -- though that one in particular had a recent patch to help cut certain elements of the game to reduce file size.