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EpicNNG made a strange observation to Gearbox’s latest patch for Borderlands 4.
The patch is a massive 11.2 GB on PC. However, this is not the full story.
EpicNNG tweeted this out in response to that news:
For those who may be interested: Gearbox has seemingly changed the way they do updates now, which results in smaller game size overall.
The downside to this however, is that any pak changed most likely needs to be re-downloaded. Meaning this isn’t 11GB of changes, per se.
File Sizes Are A Real Issue
As we have seen, game developers have been reacting with the double bind of AAAs and their large sizes.
It makes sense for AAAs to keep getting bigger and needing more file sizes. As expectations keep getting higher, developers need to put more into their games to meet them.
Borderlands 4 on PC can do much more than on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S. Of course, we haven’t forgotten that the game isn’t very well optimized at the moment.
But since Gearbox doesn’t have to deal with the same limitations on PC that they do on console, they can make bigger changes like this.
Activision was really the poster boy for big file sizes. They’ve had to make changes to Call of Duty to address complaints about using the Call of Duty Hub.
They have adjusted it so that you don’t have to download all the games on the Hub to be able to play it. They’ve also changed newer Call of Duty games so that higher textures are streamed instead of being run natively.
Borderlands 4 Is Going To Do Mass Shifting With Every Patch Apparently
Based on EpicNNG’s explanation, Gearbox’s future patches will do crazy things to your PC’s Borderlands 4 build.
In the case of this recent patch, the 11 GB download doesn’t get added to the full size of the game. What’s actually happening is part of that 11 GB will fully replace files that are already in your PC.
So the advantage overall is that when the downloads are done, the game will generally take up less space in your computer. But you will have to plan for new patches in case your PC doesn’t quite have enough space for everything.
This is considerably better than how Call of Duty Hub used to work. But we’re not sure if this is the desired new normal for game patches moving forward. Anyway, we’ll see if this changes again in the future.
