Arrowhead Game Studios is considering dropping HDD support from the Helldivers 2 PC version, a senior company official has confirmed. The move is being evaluated as one of the measures to reduce Helldivers 2's massive installation size on PC.
The pre-release PC system requirements for Helldivers 2 mandated over 100GB of storage space. The actual install folder would drop to around 70GB after the initial download. However, subsequent updates kept inflating the game's installation size. As of late October 2025, the Helldivers 2 Steam page lists a 135GB storage requirement. At the same time, the PS5 version of the game grew from just under 25GB in February 2024 to approximately 35GB in September 2025. The Xbox Series X/S version, launched this August, is comparably compact.
Frustrated Helldivers 2 Players Discover Secret 'Undocumented' Enemy Buffs
Following a recent update, Helldivers 2 players are frustrated due to a lack of transparency from Arrowhead due to enemies being secretly buffed.
Arrowhead Considering Dropping Helldivers 2 HDD Support to Reduce PC Installation Size
Arrowhead CEO Shams Jorjani has now confirmed that the Swedish studio is considering dropping support for hard disk drives (HDDs) from the PC version of the game in order to try getting its ever-increasing installation size under control. The executive characterized this option as something that's "being looked into" in response to a fan question posted to the official Helldivers Discord server in late October 2025. Separately, he also tackled some other technical questions, saying the current Helldivers 2 performance problems will take "many more months" to resolve.
How HDD Support Is Holding Back Helldivers 2
As recently explained by Arrowhead Deputy Technical Director Brendan Armstrong, HDD support is the chief culprit behind Helldivers 2's massive PC installation size. To compensate for the slower speeds of hard drives compared to solid-state drives (SSDs), the developer duplicates certain data across the disk. This reduces loading times by minimizing the distance the read head must travel across a spinning plate to access commonly used assets, such as tree or rock textures.
Since the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S don't use HDDs, the console versions of the game don't have to resort to data duplication, which solves a problem that doesn't exist on SSDs. Arrowhead said it was treating the Helldivers 2 PC installation size as a higher-priority issue beginning early September 2025, but without committing to a concrete timeframe for its resolution.
Before Jorjani’s encouraging update, the Swedish developer had expressed reluctance to drop HDD support, stating it first wanted to assess how many PC players would be affected by such a move. The decision is not necessarily all-or-nothing; one potential compromise involves maintaining HDD support through a separate build, while offering an SSD-only version for Helldivers 2 PC players with solid-state drives.
Helldivers 2
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OpenCritic Reviews
- Top Critic Avg: 83 /100 Critics Rec: 91%
- Released
- February 8, 2024
- ESRB
- Mature 17+ / Blood and Gore, Intense Violence, In-Game Purchases, Users Interact
- Developer(s)
- Arrowhead Game Studios, Nixxes
- Publisher(s)
- Sony Interactive Entertainment, PlayStation Publishing
WHERE TO PLAY
- Genre(s)
- Third-Person Shooter, Extraction Shooter, Action, Science Fiction
Source: FRVR