Arrowhead: Helldivers 2's storage bloat stems from a decision to support gamers still using HDDs
While Helldivers 2 continues to dominate the multiplayer co-op shooter space, the game is facing a storage crisis due to the game’s ballooning size with subsequent updates. As of October 2025, the game’s install size has swelled to 150 GB on PC, approximately three times greater than its console ports, where the game clocks in at around 50 GB.
This storage disparity isn’t because of 4K textures or a bloat for bloat’s sake, but an intentional choice on the part of Arrowhead Game Studios to keep the game playable on older hardware, particularly players running the game on mechanical hard disks or HDDs, which remain a part of the game’s minimum spec requirements.
Addressing the Helldivers 2 storage controversy, Arrowhead shared a candid post on the official Helldivers 2 subreddit. Arrowhead’s deputy technical director stated, “This is primarily a result of duplicated data, which is needed to reduce loading times for games on older storage such as mechanical HDDs.”
Duplicated copies of textures and models across the drive allow for minimizing seek times on HDDs, where random access can bring missions to a grinding halt. SSDs, in comparison, read through data regardless of location with much faster access than their HDD counterparts, making such a need redundant. This is pretty much the reason why console versions of Helldivers 2 have a significantly smaller file size.
Helldivers 2 still racks up a daily average of 50–60k concurrent players on Steam, a bit lower than its launch highs, but still respectable. However, the ballooning file size makes for a tough balancing act as Arrowhead tries to keep HDD support around for players with older hardware, while trying to cater to users with modern SSDs, too.
Despite this, Arrowhead continues to drop content updates, introducing new biomes, weapons, Terminid, and Automaton variants. These duplicates multiply, turning what was formerly a lean 36 GB launch into a behemoth that’s left the Helldivers 2 Steam community grumbling about storage shortages across the board.
For now, Arrowhead is drawing the line as it states, “We cannot eliminate all duplication without making loading times for mechanical HDDs ten times slower, and we do not feel this is acceptable.”
While Arrowhead promises to trim unused assets for short-term tweaks in an upcoming patch, additional content added down the line is expected to erode some of those gains making it a potentially persistent issue for gamers with limited storage space, especially in a release-heavy 2025.
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