Arrowhead Game Studios has finally clarified why Helldivers 2 occupies so much disk space on PC — and unfortunately there’s no simple patch that will instantly shrink it.
Complaints about the PC install size have intensified after a recent update pushed the game past the 140 GB mark, roughly three times larger than the PS5 and Xbox Series X|S versions. Arrowhead CEO Shams Jorjani said the issue was a priority for the studio, but did not provide a timetable for a fix.
In the first entry of a developer blog series addressing “the technical health of the game and some of the technical challenges we’re working through,” the studio’s deputy technical director explains that the bloated footprint — roughly 150 GB — stems from deliberate data duplication. That duplication is intended to keep the game performing acceptably on older storage formats, especially mechanical hard disk drives (HDDs) and optical media such as DVDs. Read the full studio post on Steam.
The devs call the trade-off “the six-million-dollar question”: do they keep optimizations for HDDs, which remain part of the minimum PC spec, or prioritize reducing install size for players on faster storage? Arrowhead admits they don’t yet know how many Helldivers 2 players still rely on mechanical drives.
The studio estimates roughly 12% of PC gamers use mechanical HDDs, but without more precise telemetry it’s hard to judge the impact of removing duplicated assets. They note an important constraint: mission load times are gated by the slowest machine in a squad, so removing duplication could dramatically increase load times for HDD users.
“We cannot eliminate all duplication without making loading times for mechanical HDDs ten times slower,” the team says. “We do not feel that is acceptable.” Still, Arrowhead has found some room to improve: a forthcoming update will sweep unused assets and fix obvious issues — changes that may be subtle to players but will help prevent further bloat.
To reduce duplication without blowing up memory usage, Arrowhead plans to group the worst offenders into “very common assets” bundles that load under fixed conditions (for example, specific factions or biomes). That approach will increase load times for HDD users slightly, but early testing suggests the delay should remain under 30 seconds rather than balloon into several minutes.
Looking further ahead, the team is investigating engine-level changes to avoid loading common data unnecessarily and experimenting with compression techniques and console-style de-duplication. Those options could reduce disk usage but might also harm load times — the studio has not ruled anything in or out yet. Arrowhead also stated they’re reluctant to make the highest-resolution textures an optional download.
“We’re taking player concerns seriously, but there are no easy solutions,” the studio concludes. “Until the majority of our PC players use SSDs, we must accept some extra disk usage to keep mission load times reasonable. We’re carefully weighing the costs and trade-offs and will work toward a better balance between loading performance and install size.”
Source: gamesradar.com
