Helldivers 2 trims 131GB—same game, smaller install

Helldivers 2 has unexpectedly become one of the most dramatically slimmed-down AAA releases in recent years: Arrowhead Game Studios has cut the install size from roughly 154GB to 23GB—an almost 85% reduction. The saving is enormous—about 131GB—and, crucially, this isn’t a pared-back build with missing content, but the full game delivering the same experience.

On its Steam page, the team credits Nixxes Software—a studio known for top-tier PC ports—with helping achieve the result. The key optimization turned out to be very down-to-earth: the developers removed duplicated data. Previously, Helldivers 2 took up so much space because parts of its assets were stored in multiple copies, a common tactic to speed up loading on older mechanical HDDs, where disk reads are much slower than on SSDs.

The hitch was that the initial assumptions about how much HDDs would impact loading proved too conservative. After measuring real gameplay data, the studio concluded that even players still on mechanical hard drives should see only minimal changes. By their estimate, roughly 11% of users over the past week were on HDDs, and in the worst case mission loads may grow by only a few seconds. Most of the wait, they note, comes not from streaming assets off the drive, but from level generation—which runs in parallel and typically dictates the total loading time.

For now, the slimmer build is available via the Steam beta branch: opt into the latest beta update to install the smaller package. The developers stress that it’s the same Helldivers 2, and that progress, Galactic War contributions, and purchases should transfer intact. You can exit the beta at any moment if anything goes wrong.

It feels like a rare case where a studio gives something back instead of steadily inflating system demands: precious disk space. After a result like this, it’s hard to imagine many convincing explanations for why the next big shooter still “won’t fit” on an SSD.

Age rating: 18+.