Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2’s disc is just 72MB of nothing

Physical copies of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II are starting to be delivered worldwide, and players have been stunned to find the discs only include 72MB of data. Instead, owners have had to download the entire game digitally, which Eurogamer reports could take up as much as 150GB of space on the PS5.

Activision has effectively shipped a dummy disc, meaning physical copies of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II will always have to connect up to the internet to get a copy of the game. It’s a process that has seen widespread criticism in the past, particularly because it can hinder game preservation, force firmware updates, and overall, pushes owners toward DRM versions of games that might not work properly years in the future.

Thankfully, the vast majority of game discs, particularly on PlayStation, ship with the full game. It’s still rare to see dummy discs like this, but it’s incredibly disappointing since you’re forced to download the game entirely. That’s a problem if you live in a country with strict data caps or even markets where download speeds are slow. You’ll have to keep your console on for hours to download Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II, which adds to electricity costs and environmental impacts.

While it’s relatively normal for day one patches to improve games, as Lance McDonald points out on Twitter, there’s a big difference between a day one patch to fix things and the game not being on the disc. While the base game is around 35GB, a day one patch has ballooned the game size to up to 150GB when installed with all of its packs on a PS5.

We’ve reached out to Activision to comment on why physical copies of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II don’t include the game, and we’ll update you accordingly.