Ah, yes. The “let’s bloat our game size to bully other games off your SSD so you’ll be reluctant to ever uninstall it, because reinstalling it would be a big pain, that way you’ll play it indefinitely and give us extra money in micro transactions” strategy.
That’s a good idea, but not always viable. Most content delivery systems don’t support optional assets. Also it is impossible to know in advance what do you need. Before the game is launched, it doesn’t know that you don’t have a 4K screen.
And storage prices are so low today, why do you even bother? Just buy an 8 TB drive or two and forget about it.
There are MANY games from half a decade ago + that just have 4k textures as an additional free dlc, or a setting to download them in game, definitely easy to support by the multi dollar company behind COD
Most people play on consoles. Most consoles are hooked to 4K TVs. 4K assets are essential, they cannot be DLCed. Unless you want a scandal that PC version comes with shittier assets than a console version.
The real problem here is not the size of the game, the real problem is that it turned out that PC gamers are stuck in stone age playing 1080p while bragging about higher picture quality for decades.
How are they essential when most consoles aren’t 4k capable. Switch, Series S, PS4 they all look fine on a 4k TV. Games on Series S even take less storage space, because they don’t use 4k assets.
Last gen consoles are 4K capable, all current gen consoles are 4K. What are you talking about?
Steam or whatever launcher could still ask the resolution I want to use before it starts downloading. If the player changes their mind, then they can download higher resolution assets later.
Diablo 2 back in the day would ask which resolution I want to play on in its installer.
See my answer above https://lemmy.world/comment/5054278