Arrowhead explains why Helldivers 2 on PC weighs 150 GB: duplicated assets to speed HDD load times, smaller SSD builds, and plans to trim redundancy in updates.
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Arrowhead Game Studios has outlined why the PC version of Helldivers 2 has ballooned to 150 GB—nearly triple the size on consoles. The studio’s deputy technical director said the reason isn’t 4K textures or sloppy optimization, but a deliberate choice to support players still launching the game from traditional hard drives. To keep missions from loading too slowly on HDDs, the team duplicates a large amount of data—textures and models—across the drive, cutting down on seek times. SSDs cope without this redundancy, which is why the console builds are smaller.
At Arrowhead, they added that removing duplication entirely isn’t feasible, otherwise HDD load times would be about ten times longer. The developers pledged to partially clear out redundant files in a future update, while acknowledging that each new content drop will increase the footprint again. It’s a pragmatic trade-off that prioritizes accessibility over a lean install.
Despite complaints about “gigabyte terror,” Helldivers 2 still attracts roughly 50–60 thousand concurrent players on Steam, so the studio is wary of shrinking its audience just to save disk space. It naturally raises the question of why the PC build couldn’t avoid duplication on systems with SSDs.
Age rating: 18+.