Helldivers 2 PC Beta Cuts Install Size to 23 GB

Arrowhead Game Studios has released a public beta for Helldivers 2 on PC that slashes the game's installation size by about 85 percent, dropping it from roughly 154 gigabytes to 23 gigabytes. The update, available now on Steam, addresses long-standing complaints from players about the title's bloated footprint compared to its console versions.

The reduction stems from a reevaluation of how the game handles data storage on personal computers. When Helldivers 2 launched earlier this year, developers built the PC version with support for mechanical hard disk drives in mind. Unlike consoles such as the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X, which rely on solid-state drives for near-instantaneous access, older PC hard drives require more time to seek and read data. To minimize loading delays, Arrowhead duplicated numerous assets, including textures and sound effects, across the installation. This approach, common in older game designs to optimize for spinning disk media, inflated the file size significantly. Each subsequent update compounded the issue, pushing the total to around 150 gigabytes while console installs remained in the mid-20 gigabyte range.