Rainbow Six Siege will be getting a “data cleanup” patch, and one of the patches will be up to 42GB according to a blog post from the developers.
A PC with Ultra HD graphics capabilities will be getting the 42GB patch, while PC’s without Ultra HD graphics capabilities will be getting a 26GB patch. The console editions of the game (Xbox One and PlayStation 4) will both receiving a 15GB patch.
“With this new patch, we plan on resetting the foundation that future patches are built upon, and establishing the Y2S3.0 patch as the new baseline that we will update the game client from. As a result of resetting the baseline, we must replace a significant number of the existing data forges. This is why the Y2S3.0 patch is as large as it is,” it says in the developer blog post.
Even so, this is an incredibly large download and I wonder if some people’s PCs will be able to handle that size.
“All game data is stored in what we refer to as a ‘forge.’ This is a compressed archive containing other files. When we need to modify a file that is part of a forge, we simply download a new forge that contains the new file without replacing the original forge,” it also says in the blog post. “This simplifies the patching process, and reduces the download size. Over time however, it leads to a lot of wasted space on disk, as there are more and more modified files.”
The new system will allow players to have more room on their hard drives and should increase loading times by around 10 percent for consoles and an unknown amount for PCs (since everyone has a different PC build). Future patches will also be a lot less, so players won’t have to worry about needing a lot of space for other updates by around 12 to 15 percent.
Also, textures on PCs (for all graphic settings) will be tweaked to get an increase for both character textures and environment textures.
“For players that meet the 6GB VRAM minimum to use the Ultra HD pack, you will see an increase in environmental texture quality. Environment textures take up ~60% of available VRAM, and without making the Ultra HD pack unusable by anyone but those with the most powerful builds, the upgraded environment textures did not fit into the Ultra HD pack,” it says in the blog post. “Now that we have streamlined the way data and textures are handled, we are able to include these upgrades in the Ultra HD pack, and make it accessible by players that meet the 6GB VRAM minimum requirement.”
This patch will be the start of Rainbow Six Siege’s year two, season three developments (which is what Y2S3.0 stands for).
It’s nice to see the developers consider the players and try to overall improve Rainbow Six Siege. The only thing that will suck is that these downloads could possibly take a while, depending on how much your PC can handle.
In recent news, Rainbow Six Siege hit 20 million players according to a tweet made by the Rainbow Six Siege official Twitter account.
Rainbow Six Siege was released back in 2015. Considering that the game is only two years old and already has plenty of accomplishments, further updates like these will probably keep the player base happy.
Back in November of last year, Rainbow Six Siege hit over 10 million players, so to hit another 10 million within only a couple of months is an amazing achievement according to Gamespot. The game also helped the Tom Clancy franchise to reach over 44 million players, and makes up for a considerate chunk of it according to VG24/7.
Featured image via Flickr/BagoGames.
