Helldivers 2 dev shares plans for reducing 150GB file size on PC that is “roughly three times larger than consoles”

Arrowhead has shared their plans for reducing the 150GB file size for Helldivers 2 on PC with the acknowledgement that it is unacceptable at “roughly three times larger than consoles”. While the file size won’t be reduced in the next update confirmed for mid-October, it will be the beginning of performance improvements as well as the implementation of other fixes such as the return of Leviathans. Unfortunately, not everything can be fixed immediately through a silver bullet, but Arrowhead are working on solutions to reduce the PC file size as much as possible.

Helldivers 2 dev shares plans for reducing PC file size

Arrowhead has shared a new blog post to inform Helldivers about their plans for the game. While the last blog post was about teasing the next update for mid-October, this post is about reducing the file size on PC which has been heavily controversial.

In the blog post, Arrowhead cite Helldivers 2 at 150GB on PC, which is “roughly three times larger than the same game installed on consoles”. We already uncovered why the game is so much bigger on PC compared to PS5 and Xbox, but Arrowhead themselves have confirmed that it’s because “Much of the data in the PC version of HELLDIVERS 2 is duplicated”.

As for why it’s duplicated, Arrowhead says it was done to “reduce loading times”. This is because duplicating assets “is a game development technique that is primarily used to optimize games for older storage media, particularly mechanical Hard Disk Drives (HDDs) and optical discs like DVDs”.

Regarding how Arrowhead are planning to reduce the file size, so far they are still deciding on the best solution. SSDs make the duplication method redundant, but Arrowhead are not fully certain whether they should abandon optimizing for HDDs as it is listed in the system requirements and Arrowhead aren’t entirely sure how many HD2 players use HDDs, although the studio’s “best estimates put it at around 12%… but the data is very unreliable and relies on a lot of extrapolations”.

While Arrowhead are still determining the best solution, for the mid-October update the game will not grow as the studio has swept their “systems for unused assets and obvious problems”. This empty space will immediately be filled by the update’s new content, but at least the game’s file size won’t grow.

As for beyond the mid-October patch, Arrowhead are “exploring taking some of the worst offenders in terms of duplication and de-duplicating them by putting them in ‘very common assets’ bundles which will always be loaded under set conditions (eg- specific faction/biome)”. The cost of this is that “loading times will get a bit worse for players using mechanical HDDs,” but “early testing shows” loading should be “less than 30 seconds”. In addition, this solution “can increase the amount of RAM used by the game by loading ‘common’ data that is not always needed”.  

Lastly, concerning the long-term, Arrowhead are planning to “make improvements to the engine which will ensure [they] never waste RAM loading common data that isn’t needed”. All other solutions beyond this point are merely “speculative,” but the idea is to “apply some kind of compression to the game data and potentially replicate some of the de-duplication [done] on consoles”.

Arrowhead’s plans won’t be implemented immediately come mid-October, but at least we know the developer is hard at work on reducing the PC file size. We don’t know when it will happen and there’s always the possibility issues can occur, but right now we at least know Arrowhead’s ideas for reducing duplicated assets caused by optimizing for HDDs.

For more Helldivers 2, check out our guide to the best warbonds ranked, along with the best stratagems and best throwables. We also have a guide to the best weapons, and, if you’re coming back to HD2 for the first time in a long while, we have a bunch of tips and tricks to help you get reaccustomed to the battlefield.