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One problem with a lot of modern games is just how big they're getting, but HELLDIVERS 2 is about to massively shrink thanks to work behind the scenes. In a news post on Steam the developers at Arrowhead Game Studios noted they pulled in Nixxes to help get it sorted.

They were making small changes across a few patches, but now the big stuff is here and you can try it out in a Steam Beta via the "prod_slim" branch. Right click the game, go to Properties -> Beta and select "prod_slim" from the drop-down box. The result should be a reduction in installation size from "~154GB to ~23GB". What an insane difference.

How did they do this? By "completely de-duplicating our data". They didn't do it before as they were worried about loading times for players who still have a traditional spinning HDD instead of an SSD. Something they spoke about in a previous news post to explain it a little more. But as it turns out, the difference is only a few seconds.

This will become the default for everyone once they've gone through feedback from the Beta to allow time for troubleshooting.

A big new update also just rolled out with Into the Unjust: 5.0.0 that brought with it the fun new premium warbond that has a minigun along with lots of improvements to the game overall.

HELLDIVERS 2 | Release Date: 30th September 2023
Platform: Proton / Wine

Official links:

Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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wytrabbit 2 hours ago
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I wonder how many of these other games with massive file sizes have duplicate data
The_Real_Bitterman 2 hours ago
"deduplicating files" did they re-pack every asset again and again with their map files and ship themin huge chunks?

Maaan glad Linux has CoW file systems. Well doesn't help with downloading but at least storing these chunky games is better.
Piwix 2 hours ago
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I've always thought many of these 100gb+ games were absurdly bloated. Seems in the modern era increased performance and storage has led to less optimization and efficiency.
fractilegames 1 hour ago
It's nice to see the huge size decrease but it makes me wonder why the hell did they ship it with the duplicated data in the first place. Is it some kind of HDD read speed optimization they used to do on old consoles..
elmapul 14 minutes ago
this will be usefull especially for steam deck 64GB users...
i wonder how many games can do something like this but still havent done nothing.
Caldathras 5 minutes ago
More developers should do this!

Making the 4K textures/graphics an optional package is also an excellent idea. Who knows, it might even help them reduce their minimum system requirements.
elmapul 3 minutes ago
Quoting: The_Real_BittermanMaaan glad Linux has CoW file systems. Well doesn't help with downloading but at least storing these chunky games is better.

it was useless in this case, because it couldnt auto detect those file duplications and save space, nor ir would be usefull in an HDD where you really needed those duplications.

Quoting: PiwixI've always thought many of these 100gb+ games were absurdly bloated. Seems in the modern era increased performance and storage has led to less optimization and efficiency.
optimization can mean better performance or less resource usage, since games are an application that need to be executed "in real time", using more storage is preferable over having stuttering, load times or lower fps.
its a shame the games couldnt auto detect you are on an SSD and delete the extra bloat...
or detect you are on an HDD and duplicate the data after you downloaded it instead of spending your internet downloading a lot of duplicate data.


i put the quotes because its not real time in the computer definition of real time, that means predictable time.
mr-victory about a minute ago
Quoting: fractilegamesIt's nice to see the huge size decrease but it makes me wonder why the hell did they ship it with the duplicated data in the first place. Is it some kind of HDD read speed optimization they used to do on old consoles..
They believed they were doing HDD optimizations, but they figured out the optimizations had no effect because loading speed was not I/O bottlenecked. So they chopped off all duplications. A lot of them apparently.
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