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.
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?