Helldivers 2 is an immensely popular shooter, but its gargantuan file size on PC is starting to rub gamers the wrong way. The latest update pushed it over 140GB, and players have had enough.
For comparison, the PS5 and Xbox Series versions of the game are a much more respectable 35-ish GB. Apparently, the colossal 140 GB size on PC is due to assets within the files being repeated.
Over on the official Helldivers Discord server, one player asks, "Any word on reducing the file size down from 140GB? I heard that there was a lot of duplicated assets." Arrowhead CEO Shams Jorjani replies, "We have escalated the priority of this. But I can't tell you when it will be addressed."
It's good to know the community has been heard on this issue, as it's becoming silly how much space some games take up.
One Reddit post claims "the actual size of unique resources is only 30.39GB," and "the most egregious case for file size I have found has been a 2K normal map for rocky environments that was duplicated 128 times for a total of 2GB of space used."
A reason for this could be that the developers are trying to ensure the game runs smoothly on HDDs, which are slower than SSDs. By repeating files, the hard-disks can get at the data more easily, but at the expense of taking up more space.
People have also been comparing the size to Call of Duty, but that recently underwent a drastic file size reduction. Black Ops 6 dropped a whopping 100GB on PS5, taking it down to a much more manageable 25GB.
If Helldivers 2 has gotten too big for its boots, you should check out the best online games you can play instead.
