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submitted 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) by inlandempire@jlai.lu to c/games@sh.itjust.works

*We have followed through on our plans and made small reductions in the PC installation size over the last few patches while still adding new content. While this was a good start, our short term fixes have not been enough to keep up with all of the new content in the latest patch. The longer term goal has always been to bring the PC installation size much closer in line with the console versions. We are happy to report that, thanks to our partners at Nixxes, we have reached that goal much sooner than expected._

By completely de-duplicating our data, we were able to reduce the PC installation size from ~154GB to ~23GB, for a total saving of ~131GB (~85%). We have completed several rounds of internal QA and are ready to roll this out to early adopters as a public technical beta. Our testing shows that for the small percentage of players still using mechanical hard disk drives, mission loading times have only increased by a few seconds in the worst cases. This is live NOW!*

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[-] favoredponcho@lemmy.zip 66 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

The fact that they were using 5-6x more space than required in the first place is pretty infuriating. How many other games are doing this shit? Explains why many games now are 100-200GB.

[-] infinitepcg@lemmy.world 21 points 4 days ago

I found that surprising too. In the article, they explain that this was on purpose to improve loading times for people on slow HDDs.

[-] Suburbanl3g3nd@lemmings.world 10 points 4 days ago

And they talk about how it's seconds different for hdd users with the tiny size lol

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[-] fibojoly@sh.itjust.works 15 points 4 days ago

You ever heard of the fit girl? She does this to every single game she touches and it is amazing to see.

[-] Skankhunt420@sh.itjust.works 7 points 4 days ago

Yes but then takes 17 straight hours to decompress a 30gb game during install.

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[-] kazerniel@lemmy.world 3 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

My Genshin install on PC would be ~115 GB (in practice it's more bc I have an extra voice pack), while the same game on mobile is allegedly ~30 GB 😒

[-] GraniteM@lemmy.world 19 points 4 days ago
[-] inlandempire@jlai.lu 10 points 4 days ago

In the case of Mario it's a smart way of handling the limited data available, its not a duplicate texture like Helldivers, its the same cloud copy pasted just with a different color.

From what I understand Helldivers had the same files duplicated multiple times so that HDD could find them easily (somehow)

[-] regedit@lemmy.zip 5 points 4 days ago

Ahh yes, the same approach I have to script development: multiple files, in different places, for different platforms, all with the same code!

[-] mojofrododojo@lemmy.world 3 points 3 days ago

resource hell. which version of ChromeShaderFinalV7 was it, the one that says FINALFINALChromeShaderFinalv7 or the one that says "IGNORE FINAL FINAL USE THIS ONE INSTEAD V7"?

[-] regedit@lemmy.zip 2 points 3 days ago

Stop spying on me! I do to IDEs what common people do with browser tabs.

[-] mojofrododojo@lemmy.world 2 points 2 days ago

the struggle is real

[-] a_person@piefed.social 2 points 3 days ago

To account for people using different systems with different executable paths, we will be placing a copy of this script in every single folder in your computer. -microsoft probably idk

[-] regedit@lemmy.zip 2 points 3 days ago

$ScriptDir = $ThisScriptPath if ($ScriptDir ≠ $GameFilePath) { Set-Path $GameFilePath }

(⌐■_■)

[-] ArtVandelay@lemmy.world 2 points 3 days ago

It has to do with seek times where hdds literally have to travel to the spindle with the relevant data, so storing it multiple times means it finds what it needs faster

[-] carpelbridgesyndrome@sh.itjust.works 40 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

Modders beware! Any patch we roll out can break the game if you have mods installed and this one is no exception. We recommend that only players with a clean installation opt-in to the slim version. As always, you mod the game at your own risk.

Huh. This game has anticheat. Do they want you modding or not? Also I was not aware there were mods.

[-] LaserTurboShark69@sh.itjust.works 38 points 4 days ago

As far as I know, they have been cool about client side mods like armor skins and textures but obviously they're not cool with you giving your account a bunch of the premium currency

[-] kuhli@lemmy.dbzer0.com 11 points 4 days ago

AFAIK basically the only thing they care about is that you don't cheat in premium currency or ruin other players experiences, they're fine with local mods

[-] FlihpFlorp@piefed.zip 13 points 4 days ago

At least on nexus it’s all cosmetic as mods cannot add content

It’s how you got halo weapons before the warbond in the form of reskinned liberators. I also had one that was a railgun overcharge sounds, if the gun was fully charged it would go boop boop boop. There’s some that gives the b01 default armor cat ears. Some friends who are more courageous and/or undemocratic than me who have turned the adult filter off have reported some interesting armor and enemy reskins

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[-] pHr34kY@lemmy.world 26 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

This vibes like that scene in Dumb and Dumber where Harry is standing next to a fire complaining that his fingers are about to fall off, and Lloyd says "you should take these extra gloves. Mine are getting sweaty".

This game currently consumes 30% of the hard drive on my main PC.

I'm impressed by the technical feat, but am also annoyed that they knew they were wasting this much space and simply did not care. I'm betting every 100GB game is like this.

[-] fibojoly@sh.itjust.works 4 points 4 days ago

That's what happens when your artists are not technically literate. I worked with photographers / videographers for a bit and I had to explain to them that no, you can't just copy paste your 40Mb photos onto the online gallery, even if yes, the Web page will just resize them. We don't actually need a full gallery of 600dpi files online thanks.

Feckin muppets.

[-] Voroxpete@sh.itjust.works 8 points 4 days ago

Read the article before making assumptions. It's nothing to do with the artists.

They were deliberately duplicating all of their data to speed up load times for mechanical disks. Based on industry standard assumptions, they thought this was necessary. The article goes more into why it wasn't actually necessary after all. But it was nothing to do with the efficiency of their models and textures.

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[-] alphabethunter@lemmy.world 9 points 4 days ago

Okay, this is insane, and insanely good. Insane that they're using 5x the amount of space needed, and good because now I can forever leave the game installed in case a friend asks me to play, and won't have to worry about losing 16~% of my 1tb ssd for games.

[-] AlexisFR@jlai.lu 6 points 3 days ago

And the community is still mad, because apparently doing this after 2 years is WRONG

[-] mojofrododojo@lemmy.world 2 points 3 days ago

frankly it seems a bit late in the game to start worrying about low level simple optimization like this. Perhaps they are upset that they had to endure bloated installs for so long? which seems reasonable considering the enormously ridiculous 145gb....

[-] kibiz0r@midwest.social 16 points 4 days ago
  • loads more slowly on HDD
  • now small enough for your SSD
[-] Voroxpete@sh.itjust.works 4 points 4 days ago

And it turned out that the slower load on HDD wasn't nearly as bad as they thought it would be.

[-] Buddahriffic@lemmy.world 2 points 3 days ago

I'm not very impressed that they used an optimization that blew up the game size 5x that they knew would only benefit a subset of users without even doing any profiling on it until 2 years after release. Good that they eventually revisited it, but someone fucked up making that decision in the first place.

[-] NeryK@sh.itjust.works 6 points 4 days ago

I opted into the prod_slim beta and it works as advertised. 22.01 GB on my SSD and the game is running the same as before, as far as I can tell.

[-] Jyek@sh.itjust.works 6 points 4 days ago

Anyone find anything nefarious in the EULA after this update?

[-] Xenny@lemmy.world 2 points 4 days ago

Oh shit! I might actually reinstall this thing

[-] blackbarn@lemmy.zip 4 points 4 days ago

Great for steam deck users

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this post was submitted on 02 Dec 2025
198 points (99.0% liked)

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