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High street retailer GAME has announced it is foregoing the usual midnight launch for the latest Call of Duty game, instead selling Black Ops 4 from 6pm on Thursday October 11, the day before its official launch.
This is to cater for the fact that, when the servers go live at midnight on the 12, players will need to have downloaded and installed a whopping 50GB day one patch for CODBLOPS4. If they don’t have the patch, they can’t play online – and seeing as COD 2018 doesn’t feature a single-player campaign… well, the decision makes sense.
As GAME tweeted, it’s not just pre-order sales – anyone can come in between 6-9pm tomorrow and pick up a copy of the game so they’re prepped for the actual launch. Unless they have slow internet, in which case hard luck, eh?
Interestingly, the decision to allow people to pick the game up early has been officially approved by Call of Duty publisher Activision, so there won’t be any broken street date fury as a result of the move.
Kotaku has done some further digging and discovered the messaging Activision and GAME is pushing behind the move:
DO NOT SAY
Any mention of "early access" / "play early" / "play at 6pm"
DO SAY
Pick up in Store at 6PM Thursday
Stores open at 6PM – Even if you haven’t pre-ordered you can come in and pick up your copy
Install to your console ready to play at midnight
Meanwhile, Amazon has reportedly been sending out copies of the game early so players can get a-downloadin’.
It’s a fun situation to be in when you’re one of the many people in Britain who still don’t have superfast broadband speeds. If a three gig patch is something you have to pore over for hours, what’s a 50 gig patch going to do for your sanity?
