The developers are taking care of people who, for one reason or another, have not acquired solid-state drives.
Deputy Technical Director of Arrowhead studio, Brendan Armstrong, explained why the PC version of Helldivers 2 takes up 140 gigabytes, when the console shooter only needs 35 gigabytes on consoles.
The reason lies in the support for mechanical hard drives (HDDs). To speed up level loading on such drives, the game uses a data duplication technique: multiple copies of common assets are created so that the HDD read head does not move over long distances. SSDs, unlike HDDs, do not have mechanical parts, so they do not need such tricks. This solution minimizes delays but leads to a significant increase in file size.
In the short and medium term, Arrowhead plans to remove unused assets and group common files to reduce loading times on HDDs and the overall installation size. However, the long-term solution remains in question: the studio is looking for a balance between performance on different types of drives.
We understand the frustration of players, and our goal is to make the game accessible and smooth for everyone.
