Helldivers 2 on PC has ballooned to some rather sizable proportions. If you were to install the game right now, your install would take up just over 141GB on your drive. Those playing on either PlayStation 5 or the newly released Xbox Series X|S version see install sizes nearer to 35GB. With the size growing with every new update, PC players started to raise their concerns.
On the official Helldivers 2 Discord, the developers were asked about what was being done to address the gargantuan install size of the game on PC. A player asked if the install size would ever be reduced and Arrowhead CEO Shams Jorjani fielded the question as relayed by GamesRadar+.
We have escalated the priority of this. But I can't tell you when it will be addressed.
Some players have started to dig into the issue on their own to see just why Helldivers 2 on PC is so much larger than the console counterparts. Back on August 21st, Reddit user RaidingForPants shared their findings. In short, Helldivers 2 on PC takes up so much space because the game has multiple duplicates of most of its assets.
Instead of having 1 copy of a given texture (or other asset), that texture is instead duplicated and bundled in multiple different files with other assets that use that texture. As an example, the Devastator and the Heavy Devastator meshes (their 3D models) are stored in separate files. However, each of these files also has a copy of several of the same textures because they both use the same textures for their main body. The normal map for the devastator body appears 44 times in the game files.
In the comments for that Reddit post, an Arrowhead developer chimed in to state that the team is aware of the issue and that they are "prioritizing finding solutions for a future patch." That comment was made on August 23rd.
The prevailing theory behind all of these duplicate assets comes down to how hard disk drives (HDDs) operate. Multiple copies of the same asset will reduce the seek time when loading assets. The HDD will just grab the nearest copy of that asset so that it can load in faster without having to find the one specific location on the platter where it's located.
This isn't really a problem with the PlayStation 5 or Xbox Series X|S versions because those consoles are guaranteed to have solid-state drives (SSDs) where spinning parts and long seek times aren't an issue. On PC, SSDs are only recommended for use but not a requirement to play.
