Arrowhead has made a significant adjustment to the installation size of its game Helldivers 2, reducing the load on players’ drives from approximately 154 GB to just 23 GB, representing a saving of nearly 131 GB, or 85%. This significant change in file size was achieved by eliminating data duplication, a practice that, while making installation easier on mechanical hard drives, resulted in unnecessary disk space usage.
An optional change
The developer has indicated that this new installation size is now more in line with the console versions of the game, which are around 35 GB. This raises questions about how much duplicated information was actually present in the previous version and whether other developers could implement similar strategies to optimize game space. However, Arrowhead has not provided many details about the specific process they undertook, although they have acknowledged the collaboration of Nixxes, the studio responsible for the porting.
Players interested in experiencing this new reduced version can choose to participate in the public beta available on Steam. To activate this option, they just need to access the properties of Helldivers 2 in their library and select the Slim beta. Despite being a beta version, the studio has assured that loading times will not be significantly affected, remaining similar to the previous version, and that there are no functional differences between both versions; all progress and purchases will be preserved.
With this move, Arrowhead hopes to free up space on players’ hard drives, a growing concern in an era where game sizes continue to increase. Could this strategy set a new standard in the video game industry? It will undoubtedly be interesting to see if other developers adopt similar methodologies in the future.
