Featured Image Credit: Arrowhead Game Studios
Topics: PC, Steam, PlayStation
Helldivers 2 just received a wild update, fixing one of the game’s biggest problems that’s been in since launch.
I don’t know how familiar you are with the technical side of Helldivers 2’s PC version, but there’s been a massive issue with the game’s file size that has needed addressing for a long time.
Basically speaking, there was an issue with Helldivers 2’s files which lead to bloated downloads and large install sizes, resulting in a massive folder the size of 154GB.
The reason for this is due to players with slower hardware, where some people had the game installed on mechanical hard drives or older SSDs that can’t keep up with the assets the game loads.
Advert
Having a larger install size means duplicating more data, allowing slower hardware to load it in faster rather than loading a compressed asset that needs decompressing.
It’s all very technical, but that’s essentially why Helldivers 2 on PC reached such a disgustingly high install size. And that’s also why the problem doesn’t exist on PlayStation, as everyone is playing on either a PS5 or PS5 Pro, so it’s easier to optimise for.
Still, it looks like Helldivers 2 studio Arrowhead Game Studios has figured out a solution with the help of PC porting masterminds Nixxes Software.
An update which is currently in public testing has reduced the file size from 154GB to a measly 23GB, a reduction of 85%.
“We now know that the true number of players actively playing HD2 on a mechanical HDD was around 11% during the last week (seems our estimates were not so bad after all),” Arrowhead explained in a 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.
"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.”
The beta is available on an opt-in basis, with Arrowhead calling it a “a low-risk way to save ~131GB of space on your drive and help us extend our testing to real-life conditions.”
The update will eventually be rolled out in the main branch once any issues have been resolved, with the legacy version of the game available for a short amount of time.
However, the studio has also stated its intention to stop supporting this legacy version at some point in the future, because “maintaining the legacy version alongside the slim version would only add extra burden to our developers, build machines, QA teams and release processes.”