Helldivers 2 on-disk size 85% reduction

Why so much duplication?

• Commenters explain the 6–7× on-disk bloat as a legacy optimization: duplicating assets so each “level” can be loaded via mostly-sequential reads, minimizing seeks on HDDs and especially optical media.
• This was standard on CDs/DVDs and older consoles; on modern SSDs it’s mostly pointless and harmful.
• Several argue this became cargo-cult: copied from prior projects and “industry data” without fresh profiling, and then left in place until users complained.

Physical media, HDDs, and storage tradeoffs

• Discussion branches into nostalgia for cartridges (fast but very expensive per MB) vs cheap optical discs with awful seek times.
• Some lament “fake” physical releases where discs are just launchers or old versions; others note SSDs are such a win that limiting games to disc speeds would be worse.
• Flash cartridge longevity is debated: some worry about data loss on shelf, others counter that write-once game carts should retain data for many years.

Benchmarking, HDD users, and “premature optimization”

• Strong criticism that the team relied on industry hearsay and worst-case projections, then doubled them “for safety,” instead of benchmarking their own loading paths.
• Defenders say this is a reasonable early assumption, especially to avoid a minority of HDD users bottlenecking squad load times, and that you can’t realistically benchmark every decision on every hardware variant mid-development.
• Later profiling showed level generation, not IO, dominated load times, making the duplication useless even for HDDs.

Download size vs install size (Steam, dedupe, tools)

• Steam distributes compressed 1MB chunks with deduplication, so players reportedly downloaded ~43 GB before, now ~20–21 GB, despite 150+ GB on disk.
• Some propose optional “HDD-optimized” re-packing or tiered asset sets (e.g., low vs ultra textures) as a better industry pattern.

Perceptions of Helldivers 2 and its developers

• Many praise the game’s fun, emergent physics and cooperative chaos, forgiving the technical jank as a small-team, old-engine quirk.
• Others see a pattern of poor optimization, crashes, regressions, and weak QA, and are frustrated that such a successful game took so long to address obvious issues like install size.
• Broader meta-discussion: people complain that “armchair devs” underestimate how hard game optimization is, while others counter that 6× bloat with no benefit is exactly the kind of thing users are justified in criticizing.