Helldivers 2 has been routinely criticized for its regularly expanding file size on PC, but the newest experimental patch is set to turn things around. While the online shooter takes up less than 40GB of storage space on consoles, the PC version grew to a whopping 154GB over time. Arrowhead's Technical Developer acknowledged the problem in October, noting that the studio would look into potential solutions.
Helldivers 2 is now rolling out a beta that reduces the PC installation size to approximately 23GB, cutting over 131GB (or 85%) of the file size, as explained in a Steam tech blog. Users who want to try out the beta can opt in (or opt out) at will. If the beta confirms that the file size reduction introduces no major issues, the slim version will be rolled out to every player.
The previous tech blog explained Helldivers 2's file size as a result of accounting for players on HDDs, which load assets more slowly than SSDs. On PC, Arrowhead was duplicating assets to make loading faster on HDDs, significantly expanding the game's file size with each update. While the majority of players use SSDs, it isn't universal like on...
