Comcast says Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 pushed internet traffic to record highs - shame about those data caps

midian182

midian182

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In brief: Call of Duty titles have long had an apparent obligation to gobble up as much of your storage space as possible. The latest entry, Black Ops 6, is no exception. The game's size and popularity contributed to what was Comcast's "biggest week in internet history," which makes its 1.2TB data cap seem even more archaic.

Comcast writes that it recorded its biggest week in internet history with Call of Duty: Black Ops 6's pre-launch. It accounted for 19% of total network traffic last week, the fifth highest internet traffic event in Comcast network history. Availability of the download and the Thursday Night Football streams accounted for 26 percent of total network traffic.

Black Ops follows in the tradition of other Call of Duty titles in requiring a hefty chunk of your storage space. PlayStation owners need 84.40 GB free to install it, while the game takes up 85.6 GB on Xbox. On PC, you need at least 102 GB free on your SSD to install Black Ops 6 – a number that can inflate to almost 300 GB if you choose to also download Modern Warfare II and III and all the content and language packs.

It is somewhat ironic that Comcast announced its record high internet traffic when most of its US customers have to deal with its 1.2TB data cap. The telecoms giant typically charges for exceeding this cap at a rate of $10 per 50GB, up to a maximum of $100 per billing period. There is an unlimited data plan that costs an additional monthly fee of $25 to $40.

In 2022, the US proposed a bill called the Uncap America Act, which looks to ban data caps from broadband providers that appear predatory. The bill is still under review.

The FCC last year said it would start investigating why data caps are needed.

It's not just in the US where the latest Call of Duty is helping break internet traffic records. On October 21 – the day the game became available for preload – the UK's largest ISPs, EE/BT, saw a surge that broke its previous record for gaming traffic. Like most of the EU and South Korea, the vast majority of the UK ISPs don't have data caps for their home internet plans.

Much of Black Ops 6's popularity is due to its appearance on the Xbox/PC Game Pass service. It's also received a lot of positive reviews, with many critics calling it the best entry in years.

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Comcast says Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 pushed internet traffic to record highs - shame about those data caps

 
Its only because black ops 6 has mandatory texture streaming. Beyond stupid....
 
Millions of people playing this game in a daily basis of course is only natural the high online traffic....and it will be even higher throughout the holidays.
 
The Talking Tech said:
Unlike most of us, I guess you like to play games with ugly textures.
Click to expand...

On the contrary: some of us being PC gamers are also avid mod users and from decades of downloading retexture mods we know that "bigger" doesn't automatically translates to "Better" when it comes to textures: it just takes far more effort to produce something that's gonna look really good after you do the texture compression and optimization.

See when you have unlimited time and resources, you get people that have been improving the same Skyrim textures for over a decade now to the point where they can sometimes be just 2x larger than original textures but at least 20x better looking once you're in game. It's just a level of work most AAA companies now are unwilling to put a single nickel into since well, you've got a big and fast ssd now even on entry level consoles right? They'll just hog as much of it as they want instead.
 
Dimitriid said:
On the contrary: some of us being PC gamers are also avid mod users and from decades of downloading retexture mods we know that "bigger" doesn't automatically translates to "Better" when it comes to textures: it just takes far more effort to produce something that's gonna look really good after you do the texture compression and optimization.

See when you have unlimited time and resources, you get people that have been improving the same Skyrim textures for over a decade now to the point where they can sometimes be just 2x larger than original textures but at least 20x better looking once you're in game. It's just a level of work most AAA companies now are unwilling to put a single nickel into since well, you've got a big and fast ssd now even on entry level consoles right? They'll just hog as much of it as they want instead.
Click to expand...
So my point stands, if the game wouldn't used high texture quality the game wouldn't look as good right?
I'm only asking for a yes or no answer, no need for "buts"
 
The Talking Tech said:
So my point stands, if the game wouldn't used high texture quality the game wouldn't look as good right?
I'm only asking for a yes or no answer, no need for "buts"
Click to expand...

Me: "Texture streaming and size has nothing to do with texture quality, you can have better looking textures than CoD at much smaller sizes and thus not require either texture streaming or insanely large minimum texture sizes when downloading and installing"

You: "...So this means you agree with me? Yay I win!"

I swear this is what I get for trying to talk sense with CoD enthusiasts.
 
Dimitriid said:
Me: "Texture streaming and size has nothing to do with texture quality, you can have better looking textures than CoD at much smaller sizes and thus not require either texture streaming or insanely large minimum texture sizes when downloading and installing"

You: "...So this means you agree with me? Yay I win!"

I swear this is what I get for trying to talk sense with CoD enthusiasts.
Click to expand...
This conversation is beyond Call of Duty...it's about gaming texture quality....if someone is going to sacrifice texture quality in a game just to keep an Internet cap then that person shouldn't be gaming at all.
 
Oh sorry, couldnt care less, the last one that actually picked my attention was the first modern warfare, everything after that I find it pointless, like doing zapping on the tv when bored. I still can have more fun firing CoD2 than playing a new one.
 
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Comcast/Xfinity - fricking joke. I finally dropped them when something better came through and no more asshat datacap!

Xfinity for me, 4 years ago, I was paying $45 a month. Speeds I got were 200Mbps/5Mbps (I know, the upload speeds are pretty much non-existent).

About 3 years ago they gave out free speed increase! Yeah! Speeds went up to 300Mbps/5Mbps (yep, still the same trashy upload speed). A couple of months later my bill increased to $55 a month. Seems that "free" speed upgrade wasn't really free.

And that's where the price and speeds sat until last year or the start of this year, I forget exactly. They sent out a memo explaining to customers that if they (the customers) were setup with auto withdraw from a checking/savings account they would save $15 on their monthly bill and if it was auto withdraw from a debit card they would save $5 on their monthly bill. The next billing cycle my monthly bill was $68.....wait. How the hell did my bill go up? I've got auto withdraw setup from my checking. Shouldn't my bill have gone from $55 to $40? WTF?

I scoured over the bill and sure enough, a $15 savings was deducted from my bill. Which means the cost of my cable internet went from being $55 to $83! Holy crap. I was pissed. Data cap at 1.2TB, 350/5 speeds. This is disgusting.

Thankfully right around the same time Quantum Fiber came into my neighborhood. No data cap, fiber connection with up to 920/920 speeds for $75 a month, for life (unless the company folds or sells, then the price for life is forfeit if the new company doesn't want to keep it). I dropped Xfinity. My speeds from Quantum tend to be around 500-600 for both up and download speeds. I'm content.

Here's the kicker from Xfinity. I could have moved to their no data cap plan. There were two options to do so.
1) Add on a $30 a month option to my current plan, which means I'd have gone from $68 to $98 and still had 350/5 speeds.
2) I agree to new terms/contract with their xFi plan that offers no data cap. However, now I'd be subject to rental fees ($10 per month, last I checked, for their modem/router) and an extra $25 on top of that, plus to keep similar speeds I'd have to be on the $60 a month plan....so I'd be paying $95 a month.

Nope, screw you Xfinity. The most irritating part was canceling the plan because the poor soul on the other side of the phone has to go through their "try to keep the customer" spiel.

I remember hearing folks were calling BO6 crap - I'm surprised so many want to play it. Not my cup of tea, hope those that got the game do like it.
 
FaTaL said:
Its only because black ops 6 has mandatory texture streaming. Beyond stupid....
Click to expand...
It just has setting like before. It was tested when it came out that minimum is basically off. So it's highly unlikely that setting is causing anything. Even if you set it to normal/on, you aren't going to see some major change. Not how the setting works.
 
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