Helldivers 2 devs slash install size from 154GB to 23GB

Re:Helldivers 2 devs slash install size from 154GB to 23GB by hinkley on Wednesday December 03, 2025 @12:45PM (#46137529)

> 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.

That makes no goddamn sense. I’ve read it three times and to paraphrase Babbage, I cannot apprehend the confusion of thought that would lead to such a conclusion.

5x gets resources to investigate, not assumed to be correct and then doubled. Orders of magnitude change implementations, as we see here. And it sounds like they just manufactured one out of thin air.

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Re:Helldivers 2 devs slash install size from 154GB to 23GB by pixl97 on Wednesday December 03, 2025 @04:47PM (#46140644)

I mean when you optimize assets for a single read on mechanical drives size blow up pretty quickly, but the single IO read reduces latency greatly. That said it only makes sense on drives with high IO latency.

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Re:Helldivers 2 devs slash install size from 154GB to 23GB by anakaine on Thursday December 04, 2025 @02:38PM (#46151850)

Perhaps this is a place where developers can offer two builds.

HDD and SSD, where SSD is deduplicated.

Im.sure some gamers will develop funny opinions, but for the last 8 years I have not had a HDD in sight inside my gaming or work machines. I'd very much rather save space if the load time is about the same.on an SSD. A 150gb install profile is absolute insanity.

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