Arrowhead explains Helldivers 2 takes up 140 GB on PC because players use standard HDDs

The developers are considerate of players who, for one reason or another, haven’t switched to solid‑state drives.

Arrowhead’s Deputy Technical Director, Brendan Armstrong, clarified why the PC edition of Helldivers 2 requires about 140 GB, while the console version only needs roughly 35 GB.

The explanation centers on supporting mechanical hard drives (HDDs). To speed up level loads on those drives, the game creates duplicate copies of shared assets so the HDD’s read head doesn’t have to travel long distances. SSDs don’t have moving parts and therefore don’t need this workaround. That approach reduces seek latency but also causes a large increase in the game’s disk footprint.

In the short to medium term, Arrowhead plans to remove unused assets and consolidate common files to both lower HDD load times and shrink the overall install size. The long‑term fix is still undecided: the studio is working to find the right balance of performance across different storage types.

Source: iXBT.games