Apparently it’s 2012 again and publishers are once again trying to force continuous internet connections to play single player games. This was revealed to be the case Call of Duty: Black Ops 6single player campaign, not just on PC as it has been for years, but now on consoles as well.
After June 9 Call of Duty Direct follow Xbox Games ShowcaseActivision has released a support page for the game that has a weird little FAQ with two questions, one of which asks: “Does an internet connection is required to play Call of Duty: Black Ops 6?” Click on it and you will be informed about the following:
To provide the highest quality visuals while reducing the overall game storage space on your hard drive, Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 will use texture streaming in all game modes. This means you will need a continuous internet connection to play every game mode, including campaign. If you’re on a console, Campaign can be played without a premium subscription service like Game Pass Core or PlayStation Plus.
Like PC gamer points outthe phrase “texture flow” more usually refers to when a game uses your machine’s memory and SSD to stream high-resolution textures using a mystical technology called mips and mipmaps. It usually has nothing to do with an internet connection.
The claim seems to be that they intend to stream textures to your internet to reduce the game’s already huge install size on your hard drive. CodBlops 6 it was previously reported to take up almost 310 GB on the Xbox officially CoD Twitter account recognized it was a joke on their behalf. Right now they’re not saying how big it will be.
More than a decade ago, various publishers—most notably Activision Blizzard and Ubisoft at the time—experimented with requiring constant Internet connections in order to play a large variety of single-player games. It was widely condemned, apparently introduced as some sort of anti-piracy measure, but completely useless as pirated versions of the games would remove online checks. In other words, it was a feature that only achieved making the official versions of the games less functional than the illegitimate downloads. The only people negatively affected were those with unreliable internet connections.
The same is true today. Call of Duty has been pulling this on PC players for a few years now, although PC HDDs and SSDs probably are away larger than those of consoles. (The computer I’m writing this on has a combined storage of over 18 terabytes across multiple devices. My Xbox Series S has one terabyte.) It gets even weirder when you learn that the size of the computer installation for Blops 6 is 149 GB (or just 78 GB if you already have a COD HQ and Military zone installed from previous games). But this year marks the first time the same online requirements have been levied on console owners.
We’ve contacted Activision to ask how much installation space is saved by this scheme, and indeed for more details on how an internet connection will support the same streaming speeds for high-resolution textures that can be achieved between components inside the same machine. We also asked how this might affect those with slow or unreliable connections (which is the case with most of the developing world as well as rural areas of developed nations) and whether they would be unable to play or have a terrible experience as a result. texture appearance.
Updated: 6/10/2024 6:23 PM ET: The text has been updated to correct an error made by the official Black Ops 6 site regarding game file size.
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