Overwatch’s next big patch will force a full reinstall

Blizzard has warned its players that Overwatch’s next big patch will force a full reinstall of the game on all platforms.

In a post over on the Overwatch forums, a member of the Blizzard team said: “The next major patch will have some pretty fundamental changes to the game client. The number of back-end changes we’re putting in is substantial enough that we can’t just patch over the current content efficiently. As a result, when the next patch comes out, the client will fully reinstall itself to handle these changes. We know that this isn’t ideal for people on metered connections, so hopefully this announcement helps you prepare for this coming update.”

This is (obviously) going to mean that when this update drops you’re going to have a bit of a wait before you can play the game. Thankfully (to some degree), Overwatch isn’t as big of a download/install as most other major releases, with its size coming in at less than 30gb. This announcement from Blizzard is intended to help people “prepare” for the update in advance; quite how we’re meant to “prepare” for having to reinstall a game I don’t know. Maybe we’re supposed to take a day off work to get it done?

Blizzard later told Kotaku that they are considering this to be a “remaster” patch and that it’s intended to improve load times, optimize memory for “constrained systems”, reduce hard drive space on PS4 and fix bugs across a number of maps. It’s also likely to introduce Overwatch’s newest hero, Ashe, into the full game.

The update—which will be landing on PC, Xbox One and PS4—currently has no release date, but we’ll keep you informed.