Battlefield 6 has fragmented install feature that allows you to slim a full 80GB installation down to 55GB on PC — feature enables installing campaign and multiplayer separately

Battlefield 6 cover art
(Image credit: EA)

The good news just won't stop for Battlefield 6 as EA seems to be doing everything right for its launch. Yesterday, we covered an alleged performance report showing impressive numbers for a modern AAA title, which coincided with the hardware requirements reveal earlier this week. Now, we're finding out that Battlefield 6 will have fragmented downloads — meaning, you can download only the parts of the game that you want instead of installing the entire thing at once. A liberating sigh of relief for storage drives.

Talking to PC Gamer, an EA representative confirmed that the base install size of the game is 55 GB and that includes the core components. From there, the player can choose to download the campaign and multiplayer on top, which will drive that install size up to 80 GB. This discrepancy was already visible on the game's Steam page, where two install sizes are listed; therefore, PC Gamer reached out to EA for a confirmation.

Hassam Nasir
Contributing Writer

Hassam Nasir is a die-hard hardware enthusiast with years of experience as a tech editor and writer, focusing on detailed CPU comparisons and general hardware news. When he’s not working, you’ll find him bending tubes for his ever-evolving custom water-loop gaming rig or benchmarking the latest CPUs and GPUs just for fun.

  • gamerk316
    As a reminder, it's rare for the main game executable to be more then a few hundred MB or so, and even with support libraries I'd wager most fall under a single GB. You know what kills space? HD assets and uncompressed audio.
    Reply
  • Notton
    Fragmented installs are how most newer titles work.
    I want to say it caught on around 2019/2020, but the earliest game with it that I can remember is Halo: Master Chief Collection (2014)
    4K texture pack being a separate but free DLC is also a thing.
    Reply
  • Math Geek
    They really need to make it standard for 2k and 4k textures to be separate downloads. Throw in separate multiplayer pack and it'll get reasonable real quick. For me only wanting campaign at 1080p, it should easily be 1/4 or less the full install size.
    Reply
  • DS426
    Math Geek said:
    They really need to make it standard for 2k and 4k textures to be separate downloads. Throw in separate multiplayer pack and it'll get reasonable real quick. For me only wanting campaign at 1080p, it should easily be 1/4 or less the full install size.
    Agreed, definitely 4K textures optional at a minimum as that's also the biggest chunk of data. If there's 8K textures, that too.
    Reply
  • DS426
    The minimum hardware requirements are interesting to me. It looks like EA made their GPU support cut-off at the same line that their vendors made -- Turing/RTX 2000 series in the green house and RDNA 1/RX 5000 series in the red house, which makes sense except for one big caveat: RDNA 1 doesn't have RT cores, so is RT actually optional in BF6 or is it done in emulation on RDNA 1, crushing frame rates??
    Reply