The size of the PC version of Helldivers 2 has been reduced by more than 80%

On the official Steam page of Helldivers 2 (Helldivers 2), Brendan Armstrong, Deputy Technical Director of Arrowhead Game Studios, explained that the team was able to reduce the installation size of the PC version from about 154 GB to only about 23 GB.

Back in October, Armstrong gave a lengthy explanation of why the PC version of the game takes up almost three times as much space as the console versions. He explained that the main reason for this is to support players who still use old hard disks (HDD) and that to improve the loading speed on these hard disks, it is necessary to repeat the game content several times because the HDD must physically shake the head to read the data.

Since all modern consoles use SSD drives that have no moving parts and their seek time is almost instantaneous, the installation volume of the console versions is much smaller, because there is no need for this duplication of data. But the PC version still needed this, because even though many powerful computers have SSD hard drives, some players still use HDDs. But in the latest update, Armstrong had some good news. After collaborating with Nixxes, a Dutch studio specialized in porting games for PC, Arrowhead managed to increase the installation volume to only 17% of the current size; While the tests show that the loading time of the missions for HDD users has increased by “several seconds”.

He wrote:

I hear you say, “Didn’t you just say a while ago that we need to duplicate data because of HDDs because load times can get 10x worse?” I must say, fortunately, our worst predictions did not happen. These load time predictions were based on industry data. By comparing SSD and HDD load times in the worst case, it was reported that without data deduplication, load times increase by up to 5 times. We conservatively doubled this number to account for the possibilities. But now the situation is different. Now, instead of general industry data, we have our own actual, game-specific measurements, and we know that only about 11% of Helldivers 2’s active players were playing on HDD last week.

Now we know that unlike most games, a large portion of the load time in Helldivers 2 is due to stage generation, not loading of graphics assets. This generation process is performed simultaneously with the loading of files from the disk, and as a result, it is the main factor determining the loading time. Now we know that this is even true for users who use HDD.

While Arrowhead isn’t ready to release the stripped-down version of the game to all users just yet, a public beta version is now available for those who want to try out the new version and give feedback. Fortunately, all of your progress, battle contributions, and purchases will carry over between the two versions. Of course, Armstrong warned that those who use drugs should continue with the full version of the game for now so that they don’t get into trouble if something goes wrong.

Source: VGC