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| Helldivers 2 hard drive requirements to shrink by around 85% on PCs. |
If you’re a PC gamer, you’ve felt the pinch. That moment you see a new game you’re excited about, only to check the storage requirements and let out a sigh. With SSD prices stubbornly high and download times that can stretch into days for those on slower connections, every gigabyte counts. So, when Helldivers 2 launched on PC taking up a whopping 154 GB of space—while its PlayStation 5 counterpart sat comfortably at 36 GB—players were rightfully confused and frustrated. What was causing this massive disparity?
The developers at Arrowhead Game Studios have finally provided a clear, technical answer, and it’s a fascinating glimpse into the often-unseen compromises made for performance.
The Reason: A Blast from the Past for Hard Drive Users
In a recent post on the game’s Steam news page, Arrowhead explained the colossal size difference. The culprit wasn't higher resolution textures or extra content for PC. It was, essentially, a well-intentioned optimization for a fading technology: the traditional Hard Disk Drive (HDD).
The PC game files were packed with multiple duplicates of many assets. This practice, known as data duplication, is a legacy technique to speed up loading times on HDDs. Here’s how it works: on a mechanical hard drive, data can be fragmented across the physical disk. If the game needs to access several scattered pieces of data at once, the read head has to jump around, causing delays. By duplicating key assets and placing copies in strategic locations, the read head has shorter distances to travel, theoretically streamlining the process.
Arrowhead stated that in a worst-case scenario, loading without these duplicates could lead to ten times longer load times on an HDD. However, they also admitted that in practice, the difference was much less severe—often only a matter of a few extra seconds.
The Modern Reality: SSDs Don’t Need the Help
The critical twist in this story is the rise of Solid State Drives (SSDs). Unlike HDDs, SSDs have no moving parts and can access any piece of data instantly, regardless of where it’s stored. For SSD users, all those duplicated files were utterly useless, simply chewing up terabytes of precious space for zero benefit.
Arrowhead’s own data revealed a telling statistic: only 11% of Helldivers 2 players were running the game from an HDD. The vast majority had already moved to SSDs. The developers were essentially maintaining a large, complex support system for a small fraction of their audience.
The Solution: A "Slim" Version for Everyone
Faced with this data, Arrowhead made a decisive call. They would remove the hard drive-optimized duplicates, significantly reducing the game's installation footprint. The result is staggering: the PC version is dropping from 154 GB to approximately 23 GB.
This "slim" version of the game is currently in beta testing, allowing the team to ensure stability. Once testing is complete, this smaller version will become the standard and will be automatically installed for all players. For the 89% on SSDs, it’s a huge win, freeing up over 130 GB of space with no downside. For the 11% on HDDs, they may experience slightly increased load times, but the trade-off for the broader community is deemed worth it.
Arrowhead also noted that the impact of removing duplicates can vary greatly between games, depending on their design. For Helldivers 2, the actual performance hit was minimal enough to make the space savings a no-brainer.
What This Means for Gamers
This move by Arrowhead is more than just a patch; it’s a sign of the times. As SSD adoption becomes the norm, developers are beginning to shed the weight of legacy optimizations designed for older technology. It’s a welcome step towards more efficient game file sizes, less time spent managing your library, and faster downloads.
So, if you’ve been avoiding Helldivers 2 due to its imposing size, relief is in sight. Soon, you’ll be able to join the fight for Managed Democracy without having to sacrifice a dozen other games from your drive.