Helldivers 2 PC Install Size Decreased from 154GB to 23GB - News
by William D'Angelo , posted on 03 December 2025 / 2,877 Views
Arrowhead Game Studios has announced the install size for the PC version of Helldivers 2 has decreased from 154GB to 23GB, an 85 percent reduction.
"We have followed through on our plans and made small reductions in the PC installation size over the last few patches while still adding new content," reads a blog post on Steam from Arrowhead Game Studios.
"While this was a good start, our short term fixes have not been enough to keep up with all of the new content in the latest patch. The longer term goal has always been to bring the PC installation size much closer in line with the console versions. 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%). We have completed several rounds of internal QA and are ready to roll this out to early adopters as a public technical beta. Our testing shows that for the small percentage of players still using mechanical hard disk drives, mission loading times have only increased by a few seconds in the worst cases. This is live NOW!"
The load times for people playing the game on an HDD has increased by seconds rather than the worst case scenario of increasing by five to 10 times.
"I am pleased to say that our worst case projections did not come to pass," said the developer. "These loading time projections were based on industry data - comparing the loading times between SSD and HDD users where data duplication was and was not used. In the worst cases, a 5x difference was reported between instances that used duplication and those that did not. We were being very conservative and doubled that projection again to account for unknown unknowns.
"Now things are different. We have real measurements specific to our game instead of industry data. 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).
"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 smaller size has not rolled out to all PC players, however, a public beta is available for those that want to try it out.
"Do you want to be an early adopter? You can opt-in right now and help us test the slim version!" stated Arrowhead. "There are no functional differences between the legacy and slim versions besides the installation size.
"You will be connected to the same galactic war as everyone else and be using the same account you always do - so all progression, war contributions and purchases will carry over between the different versions. You will still be able to matchmake and play with all other players. You can also opt-out at any time if you experience issues. It’s a low-risk way to save ~131GB of space on your drive and help us extend our testing to real-life conditions."
A life-long and avid gamer, William D'Angelo was first introduced to VGChartz in 2007. After years of supporting the site, he was brought on in 2010 as a junior analyst, working his way up to lead analyst in 2012 and taking over the hardware estimates in 2017. He has expanded his involvement in the gaming community by producing content on his own YouTube channel and Twitch channel. You can follow the author on Bluesky.
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For liberty.
Crazy how far devs can cut on storage with a good amount of optimization. (It still blows my mind that TLoZ: Tears of the Kingdom is only ~15GB. And now HD2 at only 23GB? Wow!)
Supposedly a lot of it was duplicate files lol
Nintendo is typically a master of file sizes, at least for Nintendo-developed games. Uncharted 3 GOTY on PS3 is over 40 GB. Metroid Prime 4 is 28.9 GB on Switch 1 and 31.6 GB on Switch 2.
There is a good chance though this generation we hit the first 50 GB Nintendo game, especially with DLC.
I wish devs did more of this. I don't play COD, but those file sizes are immense.
Nixxes doing good work again but honestly shocked at the pre-reduced file size, PS5 file size is 36gb.
