Helldivers 2 takes up around 150GB to install on PC (three times larger than on console), and the game’s deputy technical director has now explained why that won’t be changing anytime soon.
In a new blog post on Steam, Arrowhead’s Brendan Armstrong explained for the PC version the developers utilised data duplication to reduce loading times, something that’s primarily used to optimise games for HDDs.
As the older storage drives use a physical arm to read data, duplicating that data can make it quicker to find and thereby reduce loading times. SSDs don’t work in this way, which explains why the console versions of Helldivers 2 take up less storage space.
However, as Armstrong acknowledged, HDDs are part of the game’s minimum specs on PC but the studio doesn’t know how many players are still using them.
“Our best estimates put it at around 12 percent of all PC gamers but the data is very unreliable and relies on a lot of extrapolations,” said Armstrong. “Until we can more accurately determine the number of mechanical HDDs that Helldivers 2 is installed on, it is difficult to know how many players will be impacted by reducing the amount of data duplication. Even if that number is small, keep in mind that the load time for each player dropping into a mission is determined by the slowest member of the squad.”
Still, the studio is “actively exploring” a number of solutions for the future, although it “cannot eliminate all duplication without making loading times for mechanical HDDs 10 times slower and we do not feel that this is acceptable”.
In the short term, unused assets will be removed in the next update, though these will be replaced by new additions so won’t reduce the amount of storage space required.
A medium term solution is to bundle frequently used assets and remove duplicates, though Armstrong admitted this would increase load times for players using HDDs. In the long term, engine improvements are planned to not waste RAM loading data that isn’t needed.
A further solution would be to make the highest resolution textures an optional download. However, this isn’t natively supported in Arrowhead’s engine so would be a substantial project, Armstrong explained. As such, time on this would not be spent elsewhere on optimising performance or fixing stability issues.
“We’re taking your concerns very seriously but there are no easy solutions,” Armstrong surmised. “Until we live in a world where we know that most of our PC players are using SSD drives, sacrificing some extra hard drive space is necessary to ensure we’re all able to load into missions in a reasonable amount of time. We’ve clearly reached the limits of how much duplicated data is acceptable so smarter solutions and compromises are now required. We are very carefully weighing up the costs and tradeoffs of the options we have, and we’ll be sure to find a better balance between loading times and installation size soon.”
As a broader issue of game size, Armstrong’s reasoning explains why many modern games on PC now require an SSD, even as a minimum requirement. Arrowhead has instead aimed Helldivers 2 at a wider spectrum of PC specs, but this comes at a storage cost.
This blog post is the first of what the developer aims to be a series of posts detailing the technical challenges it’s working on.
An update for Helldivers 2 is due later this month to alleviate a number of performance issues players are currently experiencing, particularly as the game has grown in size and content since release.
Helldivers 2 also made its way to Xbox Series X/S consoles back in August, becoming the first Sony-published game on the platform and further broadening the audience.
