Helldivers 2 on PC will now take up 85% less space thanks to reduced installation size

The PC version of Helldivers 2 will now take up 85 percent less space on your computer, as Arrowhead has successfully reduced the installation size with help from Nixxes.

Until now, the game took up around 154GB on PC. Back in October, the studio explained it was looking into methods of reducing the size by eliminating duplicated assets, but warned loading times for mechanical HDDs could be 10 times slower.

However, the studio’s “worst case projections did not come to pass” and now it has successfully reduced the PC installation size down to around 23GB, a reduction of approximately 131GB.

Essentially, Arrowhead had previously duplicated a load of assets to maintain fast loading times for players using older, mechanical HDDs – this method makes it quicker for relevant data to be found. But as modern SSDs don’t work in the same way, duplication is unnecessary and instead simply takes up more space.

By eliminating duplicated assets, the size has reduced with minimal impact on loading – “seconds at most,” says Arrowhead, in a new blog post on Steam.

“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,” the post reads. “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.”

This reduced size is available now for players if they opt in to test the “slim version”. “You can also opt-out at any time if you experience issues,” the post reads. “It’s a low-risk way to save ~131GB of space on your drive and help us extend our testing to real-life conditions.”

Once this technical beta confirms there are no issues, it will become the default for all players. “Given the very minor differences in loading times between the two versions, there is no justification for us to keep supporting the legacy version long term,” the studio said. “Maintaining the legacy version alongside the slim version would only add extra burden to our developers, build machines, QA teams and release processes. Assuming all goes smoothly, the legacy version will be discontinued some time next year.”

Instructions can be found in the Steam post.

Earlier today, we reported the Helldivers film has found its director – Justin Lin, who’s directed multiple films in the Fast and Furious franchise.