We’re still huge fans of Helldivers 2’s brand of large-scale third-person shooter action. However, its gigantic PC install size after many content updates made keeping it on our SSDs scarier than any killer bug or robot. No more nightmares, as thanks to Nixxes’ help, Arrowhead has substantially lowered its size.
Though Arrowhead has talked in the past about this PC-only issue and tried to downplay it, player numbers have been taking a hit in recent times with other big shooters coming in hot, so it seems it was finally made a priority in recent weeks. Thankfully, the developers have learned that getting its overall file size down wasn’t as hard as they thought at first.
“We are happy to report that, thanks to our partners at Nixxes, we have reached that goal much sooner than expected. By completely de-duplicating our data, we were able to reduce the PC installation size from ~154GB to ~23GB, for a total saving of ~131GB (~85%),” the latest tech blog explains. That’s excellent news, but what exactly happened here?
Long story short: Arrowhead’s “worst projections” of load times on HDDs (yes, some gamers still use those) should installs not use duplicate data didn’t come to pass. “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,” meaning the new, “slim” version of Helldivers 2 on PC shouldn’t cause trouble for anyone.
Arrowhead and Nixxes (a PlayStation studio renowned for its excellent work on PC ports of games like Spider-Man) will be taking things slow with the rollout of this massive downsize though. All players can now opt into the “slim” beta branch on Steam, with the only difference being in install size (you’re keeping your progression and playing on the same servers).
Once the studios are sure there aren’t unexpected issues with this new approach to the install, it’ll become the only version Helldivers 2 players will need to download.
For the latest gaming news, follow GameWatcher on BlueSky, check out our videos on YouTube. We sometimes include affiliate links in our posts, which grants us a small commission, thank you. Please support independent Games Media. ❤️
