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

tomshardware.com

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

#51

Post by fleabitdev »

ga2mer wrote: post #43
fleabitdev wrote: post #28

Back of the envelope, in the two years since the game was released, this single bug has wasted at least US$10,000,000 of hardware resources. That's a conservative estimate (20% of people who own the game keep it installed, the marginal cost of wasted SSD storage in a gaming PC is US$2.50 per TB per month, the install base grew linearly over time), so the true number is probably several times higher. In other words, t…

>Data duplication can't just be banned by Steam Steam compresses games as much as possible, so in the case of Helldivers 2, you had to download between ~30 and ~40 GB, which was then unpacked to 150 GB (according to SteamDB[0]) [0] https://steamdb.info/app/553850/depots/

In this case, the bug was 131 GB of wasted disk space after installation. Because the waste came from duplicate files, it should have had little impact on download size (unless there's a separate bug in the installer...)

This is why the cost of the bug was so easy for the studio to ignore. An extra 131 GB of bandwidth per download would have cost Steam several million dollars over the last two years, so they might have asked the game studio to look into it.

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

#52

Post by georgeecollins »

bombcar wrote: post #36
jsheard wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From a business perspective the disk footprint is only a high cost if it results in fewer sales, which I doubt it does to any significant degree. It is wasteful, but can see why optimization efforts would get focused elsewhere.

Given how many Steam games are bought but never even installed, it would seem not terribly worth optimizing for. On phone, I bet you see some more effort.

Both things are sort of true. Its not sales where size can hurt you but retention, which is why it tended to matter more on phones. When you need space on your device the apps are listed from largest to smallest.

On both phones and PCs storage has just grown so its less of an issue. The one thing I have noticed is that Apple does its price windowing around memory so you pay an absurd amount for an extra 128 gb. The ultra competitive Chinese phone market crams high end phones with a ton of memory and battery. Si some popular Chinese phone games are huge compared to ones made for the iPhone.

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

#53

Post by embedding-shape »

tehbeard wrote: post #17
easyThrowaway wrote: post #2

Did the duplicated files were even used on pc? Like, do you even have such low access to the file system that you can deduce which duplicated instance has a faster access time on a mechanical hard drive?

It's not which duplicated instance.... Think of it as I have two packs for levels. Creek.level and roboplanet.level Both use the cyborg enemies, by duplicating the cyborg enemy model and texture data across both files, Only the level file needs to be opened to get all nessecary data for a match. Because modern OS will allow you to preallocate contiguous segments and have auto defrag, you can have it read this level f…

> As to why they had a HDD optimisation in 2024... Shrugs

Sadly, Valve doesn't include/publish HDD vs SSD in/on their surveys (https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/?platform=combined) but considering the most popular combo seems to be 16GB RAM, 8GB VRAM, 2.3 Ghz to 2.69 Ghz CPU frequency, I'm getting the impression that the average gaming PC machine isn't actually that beefy. If someone told me the most common setup paired with the previous specs was a small SSD drive for the OS and a medium/large-sized HDD for everything else and I would have believed you.

I think us as (software/developer/technology) professionals with disposable income to spend on our hobbies forget how things are for the average person out there in the world.

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

#54

Post by WreckVenom »

fleabitdev wrote: post #28

Back of the envelope, in the two years since the game was released, this single bug has wasted at least US$10,000,000 of hardware resources. That's a conservative estimate (20% of people who own the game keep it installed, the marginal cost of wasted SSD storage in a gaming PC is US$2.50 per TB per month, the install base grew linearly over time), so the true number is probably several times higher. In other words, t…

From the story:

> Originally, the game’s large install size was attributed to optimization for mechanical hard drives since duplicating data is used to reduce loading times on older storage media. However, it turns out that Arrowhead’s estimates for load times on HDDs, based on industry data, were incorrect.

It wasn't a bug. They made a decision on what to optimise which was based on incomplete / incorrect data and performed the wrong optimisation as a result.

As a player of the game, I didn't really care that it took up so much space on my PC. I have 2TB dedicated for gaming.

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

#55

Post by LtWorf »

jsheard wrote: post #19
snet0 wrote: post #16

> With their latest data measurements specific to the game, the developers have confirmed the small number of players (11% last week) using mechanical hard drives will witness mission load times increase by only a few seconds in worst cases. Additionally, the post reads, “the majority of the loading time in Helldivers 2 is due to level-generation rather than asset loading. This level generation happens in parallel wi…

From a business perspective the disk footprint is only a high cost if it results in fewer sales, which I doubt it does to any significant degree. It is wasteful, but can see why optimization efforts would get focused elsewhere.

It might but they have no way of measuring it so they won't take it into account.

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

#57

Post by robin_reala »

deng wrote: post #31
snet0 wrote: post #16

> With their latest data measurements specific to the game, the developers have confirmed the small number of players (11% last week) using mechanical hard drives will witness mission load times increase by only a few seconds in worst cases. Additionally, the post reads, “the majority of the loading time in Helldivers 2 is due to level-generation rather than asset loading. This level generation happens in parallel wi…

11% still play HD2 with a spinning drive? I would've never guessed that. There's probably some vicious circle thing going on: because the install size is so big, people need to install it on their secondary, spinning drive...

Presumably only 11% of PC players, approximately 100% of console players will be on SSD.

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

#58

Post by jsheard »

code_for_monkey wrote: post #22
jsheard wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From a business perspective the disk footprint is only a high cost if it results in fewer sales, which I doubt it does to any significant degree. It is wasteful, but can see why optimization efforts would get focused elsewhere.

I think certain games dont even bother to optimize the install size so that you cant fit other games on the hard drive, I think COD games are regularly hundreds of gigs

> I think COD games are regularly hundreds of gigs

I looked up the size of the latest one, and Sony's investment in RAD Kraken seems to be paying dividends:

Xbox: 214 GB

PC: 162 GB

PS5: 96 GB

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

#59

Post by deng »

ga2mer wrote: post #43
fleabitdev wrote: post #28

Back of the envelope, in the two years since the game was released, this single bug has wasted at least US$10,000,000 of hardware resources. That's a conservative estimate (20% of people who own the game keep it installed, the marginal cost of wasted SSD storage in a gaming PC is US$2.50 per TB per month, the install base grew linearly over time), so the true number is probably several times higher. In other words, t…

>Data duplication can't just be banned by Steam Steam compresses games as much as possible, so in the case of Helldivers 2, you had to download between ~30 and ~40 GB, which was then unpacked to 150 GB (according to SteamDB[0]) [0] https://steamdb.info/app/553850/depots/

You are missing that each update takes AGES while it tortures your disk for patching the files (on my machine it takes 15min or so, and that's on an SSD). So I agree that this is careless and reminds me of the GTA5 startup time that was fixed by a dedicated player who finally had enough and reverse engineered the problem (see https://nee.lv/2021/02/28/How-I-cut-GTA-Online-loading-times...). I still find these things hard to accept.

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

#60

Post by cabirum »

What if.. the management made a request to make the game take more space than the previous release? So everyone could see just how much content there is and how much better everything is.

I mean, the developers cannot be that incompetent while being able to ship a high quality product.

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