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

Original Article

Hacker News Discussion

📝 Discussion Summary (Click to expand)

The three most prevalent themes discussed in the thread are:

Optimization for Legacy Hardware (HDDs) is No Longer Justified: A major focus was on why the game included significant data duplication, initially understood as an optimization for Hard Disk Drives (HDDs) to minimize seek times, similar to optimizations for older CD/Optical media. Users largely agreed that this level of optimization is outdated and disproportionately inflates install sizes for modern SSD users.
- Supporting Quote: As one user noted regarding the motivation for the optimization, "I'll gladly take this update because considerable effort was spent on measuring the impact, but not one of those 'everyone around me is so lazy, I'll just be the noble hero to sacrifice my time to deduplicate the game files' updates," stated by "ffsm8."
- Supporting Quote (On the cost): "They used up a ton more disk space to apply an ill-advised optimization that didn't have much effect," observed "afavour."
Premature Optimization and Lack of Internal Benchmarking: There was significant debate and confusion over the developers relying on generalized "industry data" for performance projections instead of testing their own application early on. The community viewed the reversal as a necessary correction after realizing the theoretical optimization didn't translate to significant real-world gains because other processes (like level generation) were the actual bottleneck.
- Supporting Quote: A skeptical user noted the baffling nature of the initial justification: "We were being very conservative and doubled that projection again to account for unknown unknowns," quoted by "ghurtado."
- Supporting Quote (On the finding): "It seems bizarre to me that they'd have accepted such a high cost (150GB+ installation size!) without entirely verifying that it was necessary!" remarked "snet0."
The High Cost of Game Size on Users vs. Low Cost to Developers/Platforms: Many users felt that the unnecessary increase in disk footprint (from ~23GB to ~150GB) represented a real, though often externalized, cost to the player base, especially those with limited or smaller SSDs. This contrasts with the perceived minimal cost to the developer/publisher for hosting bandwidth.
- Supporting Quote: "If you asked the player base of this game whether they'd prefer a smaller size, or more content - the vast majority would vote content," argued "horsawlarway," suggesting the resource allocation was misplaced relative to player desires.
- Supporting Quote (On cost externalization): "The studio externalised an eight-figure hardware cost onto their users, to avoid a five-to-six-figure engineering cost on their side," calculated "fleabitdev."

🚀 Project Ideas

Asset Deduplication Audit Tool

Summary

A desktop application that scans a specified directory (like a game installation folder) for duplicated assets based on content hashing (e.g., SHA-256 of files within known content folders).
This tool provides users with a granular report showing wasted space due to asset duplication and suggests which files/copies can be safely removed, mimicking the optimization found in the discussion (trading storage for potential I/O speedup).

Details

Key	Value
Target Audience	Game enthusiasts, PC gamers hesitant to delete large games, users managing large, repetitive media collections.
Core Feature	Recursive file scanning, content-based deduplication across subdirectories, visualization of space savings, and optional safe deletion/linking of redundant files.
Tech Stack	Electron/Tauri (for cross-platform desktop UI), Rust/Go (for fast, high-concurrency file scanning/hashing).
Difficulty	Medium
Monetization	Hobby

Notes

Solves the core technical confusion and frustration discussed: finding out why an installation is bloated due to duplicated assets ("It's currently over 100GB because of duplicated assets").
If users could run this tool, they could immediately see if their games suffer from the Helldivers 2 problem, allowing them to apply the fix themselves ("I've got a half-dozen cloud accounts I need to go check for unused resources").

HDD/SSD Load Time Benchmarking Utility

Summary

A lightweight utility that allows users to select a specific game directory and run standardized, repetitive load tests (e.g., measuring time to load a defined set of small/large files) on their mechanical HDD versus their SSD setup.
The utility captures metrics (IOPS, sequential throughput, seek latency) and compares developer claims (like "5x difference") against real-world user hardware performance.

Details

Key	Value
Target Audience	Users with mixed storage setups (HDD+SSD), hardware enthusiasts, and those skeptical of developer perf claims ("Benchmarks are needed to overturn that.").
Core Feature	Automated read benchmarking, comparison reporting (HDD vs SSD), and logging results that can be optionally shared anonymously with aggregate data dashboards.
Tech Stack	Python with `psutil` and specialized OS-level disk I/O libraries (e.g., `fio` wrappers), simple web frontend for result visualization.
Difficulty	Medium
Monetization	Hobby

Notes

Directly addresses the debate over whether I/O optimization (duplication) is still relevant in 2024 ("They measured first, accepted the minimal impact..."). Users can generate the missing data.
Would generate massive discussion if users found that the performance difference was negligible for their setup, reinforcing the idea that asset loading is rarely the bottleneck ("Disk performance is not the bottleneck").

Game Install Size Manager & Conditional Installer

Summary

A wrapper/manager (similar to a custom Steam launcher extension) that hooks into game installers. It allows users to selectively opt-out of high-cost assets (like uncompressed audio or high-res 4K texture packs) during installation/updates, based on community consensus or personal preference.
For games known to duplicate assets, it could enforce deduplication during initial install if the user opts for the "Space Saver" profile.

Details

Key	Value
Target Audience	Consumers with smaller SSDs worried about capacity creep ("I have 1TB SSD left, I don't want to play COD"), and users who understand the performance trade-offs.
Core Feature	Customizable installation profiles (Standard/Minimal Assets/HDD Optimized), integration or patch notes scanning to identify high-blob assets, and options to download asset packs post-install.
Tech Stack	Python/Node.js for the management layer, using Windows/Linux APIs to manage game file structures post-download. Could integrate with SteamCMD.
Difficulty	High
Monetization	Hobby

Notes

Addresses the desire for user choice over installation footprint ("Perhaps this is a place where developers can offer two builds").
Appeals to users frustrated by storage nationalism ("154GB is A LOT still," "It's a cost that could have been opted out of"). It empowers the user to choose between content (textures) and capacity.