Helldivers 2 has grown gargantuan on PC, leaving Arrowhead with an HDD dilemma

I recently plummeted back into Helldivers 2 and was immediately reminded why it was my favorite newcomer in 2024. Developer Arrowhead masterfully escalated the fantastic first game to a full-scale level of bombast, and the blend of precision and chaos it delivers is unmatched. Since launch, we've seen the Automatons and Illuminate join the party alongside the Terminids, bringing even more diversity to proceedings. However, those updates have increased the Helldivers 2 install size dramatically - and it's much worse on PC. In a new 'tech blog,' Arrowhead deputy technical director Brendan Armstrong explains why it's grown so large, and it comes down to those on older hard drives.

Helldivers 2 on PC now takes up around 150 GB, which Armstrong notes is "roughly three times larger" the size of its console counterparts. He says that this is primarily a result of duplicated data, which is needed to reduce loading times for games on older storage media such as mechanical HDDs (Hard Disk Drives). The faster speeds of the best SSDs (Solid State Drives) mean assets and information can be quickly accessed from anywhere on the drive. Duplication is therefore unnecessary on an SSD, "which is why the console versions of Helldivers 2 do not do this."

So, as one of the best co-op games on PC, should Helldivers 2 continue to optimize for these out-of-date drives? "This is the six-million-dollar question," Armstrong writes. While they are part of the minimum-spec Helldivers 2 system requirements, he asks "How many Helldivers 2 players are still using mechanical HDDs? The truth is that we don't currently know. Even the Steam user surveys are unable to give us data on mechanical HDD use in the overall gamer population. Our best estimates put it at around 12% of all PC gamers but the data is very unreliable and relies on a lot of extrapolations."

Of course, Arrowhead could pull the lever and condemn those who are still on old hardware to even more lengthy load times, but this causes a separate problem. "Even if that number is small, keep in mind that the load time for each player dropping into a mission is determined by the slowest member of the squad." If you have a friend on an ancient machine, or someone in your public party happens to be running on a toaster, you're going to feel the loading hit just as much as they do.

While many modern games have taken the leap and mandated an SSD, Arrowhead is not yet prepared to do this. "We cannot eliminate all duplication without making loading times for mechanical HDDs ten times slower and we do not feel this is acceptable," Armstrong remarks. "There are however some compromises that we can make which will improve the installation size without blowing out the loading times too much."

In the short-term, the team has "made some small gains in the next update" by searching out unused assets and unnecessary data, "but you will likely not notice them because the new stuff we've added will eat those gains." The next step is taking some of the most commonly used assets and bundling them into special groups that will always be loaded under set conditions such as the current mission or biome. This will still mean a hit to HDD players, but one that should be in the "less than 30 seconds range," which Armstrong calls "unfortunate but unavoidable."

He also warns that this process could slightly increase RAM usage, as it's used to load these 'common data' bundles that might not always be used in full. Armstrong says this "is a risk we are monitoring," but adds that Arrowhead is hoping to "make improvements to the engine that will ensure we never waste RAM loading common data that isn't needed." Anything beyond that, he cautions, is "a bigger, riskier, more speculative project where we apply some kind of compression to the data," an approach that might not be possible in the long run.

"Could we create a solution where the highest-resolution textures are an optional download? Technically yes," Armstrong notes, but says "it is not something that is natively supported in our engine." As such, this approach "is not our first preference and is honestly something we would only consider if we're unable to make a big enough impact with our other solutions."

"In summary, we're taking your concerns very seriously but there are no easy solutions," Armstrong concludes. Arrowhead is committed to catering to HDD players for now, he says. He does admit that Helldivers 2 has "clearly reached the limits of how much duplicated data is acceptable," and as such the team is "carefully weighing up the costs and tradeoffs of the options we have."

If you're still fighting the good fight for Super Earth, this means you won't just want to grab the best Helldivers 2 weapons - you'll also benefit from the best gaming RAM.

Do you have a PC capable of running Helldivers 2 but without an SSD to install it on? Drop by the PCGamesN community Discord server and tell us about your hardware struggles.