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Warframe's The Great Ensmallening takes aim at reducing the size of the game

Where other major games are growing alarmingly massive, Warframe's The Great Ensmallening is utilizing an upcoming update to reduce the game's space on your hard drive.

TJ Denzer

September 11, 2020 9:24 AM

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As we inch ever closer to the launch of the next generation of consoles and PC gaming technology, the ever-increasing size of game files is a relevant and constant concern. But where big boys like Call of Duty: Modern Warfare look like they’re only going to get bigger, Digital Extremes is taking aim at being the hero HDD and SSD space needs. The developer recently took the opportunity to speak to an initiative aimed at reducing the size of Warframe in an update being called The Great Ensmallening.

Digital Extremes spoke to The Great Ensmallening in a Warframe forum post on September 9, 2020. According to the post, Digital Extremes is going to be utilizing a new compression technology to introduce an update on PC this coming week that should free up about 6.5GB of hard drive space. Further updates and optimization should do even more and be available to all further platforms soon after.

“The technology we’re using is called Oodle Texture and we’re extremely pleased with the savings we’re getting: our files are roughly half the size on disk and the visual differences are negligible,” wrote Technical Director Glen Miner.

With the recent launch of Heart of Deimos update content, Warframe has become massive over the years and Digital Extremes addressed that it’s getting to the point where many players need more than one hard drive or SSD to run it. With the conversation around games like Call of Duty Modern Warfare’s ridiculous near-200GB file size and the concern over if Cyberpunk 2077 will take up similar hard drive space, solutions to making games smaller without reducing their quality are likely to be happily accepted.

Here’s hoping Digital Extremes can crack the case and make the breakthrough in the ongoing balance of incredible quality and storage space of games. Warframe’s The Great Ensmallening sounds like it could be something whole industry needs sooner than later.

TJ Denzer

Senior News Editor

TJ Denzer is a player and writer with a passion for games that has dominated a lifetime. He found his way to the Shacknews roster in late 2019 and has worked his way to Senior News Editor since. Between news coverage, he also aides notably in livestream projects like the indie game-focused Indie-licious, the Shacknews Stimulus Games, and the Shacknews Dump. You can reach him at tj.denzer@shacknews.com and also find him on Twitter @JohnnyChugs.