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[Thick Thighs Save Lives]

The PC version of Helldivers 2 will now take up 85 percent less space on your computer, as Arrowhead has successfully reduced the installation size with help from Nixxes.

Until now, the game took up around 154GB on PC. Back in October, the studio explained it was looking into methods of reducing the size by eliminating duplicated assets, but warned loading times for mechanical HDDs could be 10 times slower.

However, the studio's "worst case projections did not come to pass" and now it has successfully reduced the PC installation size down to around 23GB, a reduction of approximately 131GB.

Essentially, Arrowhead had previously duplicated a load of assets to maintain fast loading times for players using older, mechanical HDDs - this method makes it quicker for relevant data to be found. But as modern SSDs don't work in the same way, duplication is unnecessary and instead simply takes up more space.

By eliminating duplicated assets, the size has reduced with minimal impact on loading - "seconds at most," says Arrowhead, in a new blog post on Steam.

"We now know that, contrary to most games, the majority of the loading time in Helldivers 2 is due to level-generation rather than asset loading," the post reads. "This level generation happens in parallel with loading assets from the disk and so is the main determining factor of the loading time. We now know that this is true even for users with mechanical HDDs."

This reduced size is available now for players if they opt in to test the "slim version". "You can also opt-out at any time if you experience issues," the post reads. "It's a low-risk way to save ~131GB of space on your drive and help us extend our testing to real-life conditions."

Once this technical beta confirms there are no issues, it will become the default for all players. "Given the very minor differences in loading times between the two versions, there is no justification for us to keep supporting the legacy version long term," the studio said. "Maintaining the legacy version alongside the slim version would only add extra burden to our developers, build machines, QA teams and release processes. Assuming all goes smoothly, the legacy version will be discontinued some time next year."

Instructions can be found in the Steam post.

Helldivers 2 on PC will now take up 85% less space thanks to reduced installation size

The PC version of Helldivers 2 will now take up 85 percent less space on your computer, as Arrowhead has successfully reduced the installation size.

www.eurogamer.net

 

[Tobimacoss]

Well done Nixxes, now back to the Death Stranding 2 and Horizon franchise PC and Xbox ports.

 

[DeepEnigma]

Good stuff.

Wonder if they're dropping HDD support which they claim was causing them some issues.

It's 2025, almost 2026, it should have never been there to begin with. What tard's game on HDD with current year games?

 

[Mr Hyde]

Wow. That is impressive.

 

[IntentionalPun]

Small load time increases I'm assuming from the blurb?

 

[adamsapple]

So what is severely under-optimized originally or is it going to eat up more CPU cycles now for decompression ?

 

[LectureMaster]

Helldivers 2 on PC will now take up 85% less space thanks to reduced installation size

The PC version of Helldivers 2 will now take up 85 percent less space on your computer, as Arrowhead has successfully reduced the installation size.

www.eurogamer.net

 

[mckmas8808]

Nixxes stay working man! Geez lol

 

[DeepEnigma]

So what is severely under-optimized originally or is it going to eat up more CPU cycles now for decompression ?

Probably better optimized since it's an old engine that was built on HDDs in mind during the long development.

Noticed a lot better performance since they've been cleaning up their server backend as well of unnecessary files that were impacting client side performance. Been pretty smooth and rock solid the past couple of months without having to do many client updates.

 

[ShaiKhulud1989]

Hey, Fat(lol)shark! Time to do some work with Darktide which basically uses the same god damned engine!

 

[Trogdor1123]

Good stuff.

Wonder if they're dropping HDD support which they claim was causing them some issues.

It's 2025, almost 2026, it should have never been there to begin with. What tard's game on HDD with current year games?

Someone said they are super popular in Japan still. No idea if true

 

[Tobimacoss]

Hey, Fat(lol)shark! Time to do some work with Darktide which basically uses the same god damned engine!

Which engine would that be?

 

[ShaiKhulud1989]

Which engine would that be?

ex-Stingray, ex-Bitsquid, now simply Fatshark Engine. Since both teams are from Sweden and share a portion of former GRIN employees among their ranks, it's only natural that Arrowhead is sharing the engine from their peers since The Showdown Effect.

 

[Banjo64]

So what is severely under-optimized originally or is it going to eat up more CPU cycles now for decompression ?

Was compatible with HDDs which they cited as the issue (duplication of assets).

Refused to download it on my Deck as the size was disrespectful - will give it another go now.

 

[DeepEnigma]

ex-Stingray, ex-Bitsquid, now simply Fatshark Engine. Since both teams are from Sweden and share a portion of former GRIN employees among their ranks, it's only natural that Arrowhead is sharing the engine from their peers since The Showdown Effect.

Basically the discontinued Stingray that they heavily modified.

Helldivers 2 Was Built on a Discontinued Engine — ‘Our Crazy Engineers Had to Do Everything’ - IGN

PlayStation 5 and Steam hit Helldivers 2 was built on an engine that was discontinued after work on the game began.

www.ign.com

 

[Jinzo Prime]

Helldivers 2 on PC will now take up 85% less space thanks to reduced installation size

The PC version of Helldivers 2 will now take up 85 percent less space on your computer, as Arrowhead has successfully reduced the installation size.

www.eurogamer.net

Oh my god, that's fantastic! The game was kind of on my short list for deletion for space reasons, now I get to keep it. Nice!

 

[Jinzo Prime]

So what is severely under-optimized originally or is it going to eat up more CPU cycles now for decompression ?

The release notes on Steam says it was lots of duplicated data that was intended to reduce load times on HDDs. They now say that the load time reduction was not significant enough to warrent all the duped data, and not many players use HDDs anyway.

 

[Magic Carpet]

Thats a big squeeze in data. Does PC lose any image quality during all that squishing?

 

[Braag]

Good stuff.

Wonder if they're dropping HDD support which they claim was causing them some issues.

It's 2025, almost 2026, it should have never been there to begin with. What tard's game on HDD with current year games?

Yeah, if you're still gaming on a HDD today, either buy a console rather or go mow someone's lawn to get money for a SSD.

 

[Hector Hall]

Did it really take 150GB+ on people's rigs?

At least now they are in parity with PS5, SSDs aren't so big these days as to have 2 or 3 games eating up 300 GB

 

[Killer8]

Hopefully they can also help them get DLSS and PSSR supported.

 

[Luipadre]

DLSS next please.

 

[Donald mac Ronald]

Will this help with the forever updates on pc too? Patches take hours to install

 

[Luipadre]

Will this help with the forever updates on pc too? Patches take hours to install

It will, since it doesnt need to go over 150gb

 

[Crayon]

I find it disturbing that so much didn't need to be there lol.

 

[Dr. Samuel Hayden]

Thank fuck

 

[BennyBlanco]

Time to reinstall then.

 

[DeepEnigma]

I find it disturbing that so much didn't need to be there lol.

HDD era development (from when they started). Compression tools have come a long way as well since.

 

[simpatico]

Some people will still defend the code slop and the 9-year dev cycles, when little gems of evidence like this drop damn near monthly. "It's just the way it is now. This is the first time the gaming industry has ever dealt with new technology". Nevermind the jump from 2D to 3D which seemed to increase output if anything. No, the jump from 4k to 4k with fancy puddles doubles the development time and cost.

 

[Hero of Spielberg]

Wish more games could do this. It's absurd that just about every new game is 110GB+

 

[Kacho]

Wish more games could do this. It's absurd that just about every new game is 110GB+

I avoid buying games that are 100+ gb if possible. The time needed to download it and the storage space is too much of a commitment IMO.

 

[Hero of Spielberg]

I avoid buying games that are 100+ gb if possible. The time needed to download it and the storage space is too much of a commitment IMO.

It's one of the main things I like about Gamepass is that I can actually stream a game for a while to test it out before spending the day / night downloading it. It doesn't help my internet isn't great.

 

[PixelatedBeast]

Some people will still defend the code slop and the 9-year dev cycles, when little gems of evidence like this drop damn near monthly. "It's just the way it is now. This is the first time the gaming industry has ever dealt with new technology". Nevermind the jump from 2D to 3D which seemed to increase output if anything. No, the jump from 4k to 4k with fancy puddles doubles the development time and cost.

You say this as if Helldivers 2 didnt take 7-8 to develop and the game isnt stuck on a discontinued engine....

 

[simpatico]

You say this as if Helldivers 2 didnt take 7-8 to develop and the game isnt stuck on a discontinued engine....

And when one clever dude at Nixxes looked at it he shaved 85 GB. The point was that it needed de-slopped under the hood.

 

[yogaflame]

Looks like another technology test for Pspnextgen.

 

[Fafalada]

Now if they would please fix the broken Bluetooth audio next, I may start playing it again.
Though I wouldn't mind some rendering optimizations either for portable play. :/

 

[Z O N E]

Goes to show that studios CAN optimize their games files size... IF they really want to.

 

[tanners]

Guess blue folks another secret sauce has been revealed the ingredients
The compressive file sauce aka 'the Kraken sauce'

 

[Alexios]

So they made it too big for some folks' SSD to better support the slower HDD they then had to relegate its huge quadrupled files install on because they just googled the HDD read speeds but didn't test it actually doesn't affect loading much, as they now find. So it fits on any boot SSD. Noice

 

[YCoCg]

Just imagining Nixxes walking in and being all like "Bro, you've got 16 copies of every weapon!".

 

[playbignbox]

It's a good thing they reduced the size; the Switch 2 doesn't have much internal space for a future port.

 

[justiceiro]

If no game gone over 30gb... We could have so many games installed all the time...

 

[yurinka]

So what is severely under-optimized originally or is it going to eat up more CPU cycles now for decompression ?

Due to how HDD work (long time moving from where a file is to where tne next one is if they are separated by a long distance within the disc), it's a better idea to have data duplied multiple times to accelerate loading times. So doing this is optimized for HDD, because most Steam players use HDD, which is why they originally did in this way for Helldivers 2.

In the past, when discs where loaded from CDs or DVDs, disc readers readed faster the data in the border, at the end of the disc than the data that was in the start of the disc, so devs included a big dummy file to push the actual data of the game to the end of the disc to make it run faster.

SSD basically jumps almost instantly from a file to another independently of their position within the disc. So for SSD there's no need to have the files multiple times in the disc or to make it run faster. The speed is always the same there.

The thing is that now they have data about the Helldivers 2 players and saw most of them use SSD instead of HDD. So removed the optimization for HDD, which means that everybody will save disc space, at the cost of slower loading times for the remaining HDD users.

 

[DeepEnigma]

Idk what they did, but I assume it's tied into the better decompression. More lossless compression for the API?

Played several rounds on the PS5 Pro as well as PC, and the game looks better than prior to the patch on both. The textures are much more crisp, lighting is better, and the soft shadows and volumetrics look better.

Everything just seems cleaner overall with the IQ.

 

[RPS37]

Someone get activision on the horn!

 

[Calverz]

That's really impressive!

Buts it still not as low as I have it.

0GB.

 

[crackajack]

Good job, but god damn. It's like SSDs were introduced yesterday. Are no good programmers left in gaming so good solutions aren't found years after they should have been already common practice?

 

[Banjo64]

This just makes me pissed off that Sea of Thieves is 120gb on Steam Deck when if they optimised or excluded HDD players it could be similar to the Series S version size wise.

 

[Melon Husk]

That's really impressive!

Buts it still not as low as I have it.

0GB.

Oh so one of those game streaming enjoyers. Technically you can, it's 0 GB on Xbox Cloud...

 

[Mownoc]

Just more proof that modern games have ridiculous file sizes for no reason. Optimise your damn games.