Helldivers 2 PC install size is dropping by more than 80%, just two months after Arrowhead said HDD use made it difficult

Helldivers 2 developer Arrowhead Game Studios has announced that the PC version’s install size will be drastically reduced soon.

In an update on the game’s official Steam page, Arrowhead ‘s deputy technical director Brendan Armstrong explained that the team had been able to reduce the PC version’s install size from around 154 GB to just around 23 GB.

In October, Armstrong posted a lengthy explanation telling players why the PC version uses up around three times more storage space than the console versions.

Armstrong explained that the main reason for this was to cater for players who still use mechanical hard disk drives (HDDs) to play their games, and the need to duplicate content to improve loading speeds for them.

Because an HDD takes time to physically read the data on a disk, some commonly used assets (like tree textures or sound effects) are duplicated numerous times in the game’s data, to ensure the HDD’s read head doesn’t have to go too far each time it needs to access them.

Since all modern consoles now use solid state drives (SSDs) which have no moving parts, and because ‘seek time’ is virtually instant as a result, install size is much smaller on the console versions because duplication is no longer needed. The PC version still needs it, however, because though many high-end PCs now use SSDs too some players still use an HDD.

In his latest update, however, Armstrong has delivered the good news that after working with Nixxes – the Dutch studio which specialises in game ports – Arrowhead has managed to get the install size down to just 17% of its current size, with tests showing that mission loading times have only increased by “a few seconds” for HDD users.

“‘Wait a minute,’ I hear you ask – ‘didn’t you just tell us all that you duplicate data because the loading times on HDDs could be 10 times worse?'”, Armstrong wrote. “I am pleased to say that our worst case projections did not come to pass.

“These loading time projections were based on industry data – comparing the loading times between SSD and HDD users where data duplication was and was not used. In the worst cases, a 5x difference was reported between instances that used duplication and those that did not. We were being very conservative and doubled that projection again to account for unknown unknowns.

“Now things are different. We have real measurements specific to our game instead of industry data. We now know that the true number of players actively playing Helldivers 2 on a mechanical HDD was around 11% during the last week.

“We now know that, contrary to most games, the majority of the loading time in Helldivers 2 is due to level-generation rather than asset loading. This level generation happens in parallel with loading assets from the disk and so is the main determining factor of the loading time. We now know that this is true even for users with mechanical HDDs.”

While Arrowhead is not yet ready to roll out the smaller install size to all Helldivers 2 PC players, a public beta is available now to anyone looking to try out the ‘slim’ version and help give feedback on how well it runs.

“You will be connected to the same galactic war as everyone else and be using the same account you always do – so all progression, war contributions and purchases will carry over between the different versions,” Armstrong explained.

“You will still be able to matchmake and play with all other players. You can also opt-out at any time if you experience issues. It’s a low-risk way to save around 131 GB of space on your drive and help us extend our testing to real-life conditions.”

Once the public beta confirms that there are no issues in the ‘slim’ version, it will roll out to all players and become the default version of the game. Until that time, Armstrong warns that anyone using mods with the game may want to stick to the full-sized version in case there are issues.