Arrowhead Game Studios is considering dropping HDD support from the company Helldivers 2 PC version, a senior company official confirmed. The move is rated as one of the mitigation measures Helldivers 2massive install size on PC.
Prerequisites for the computer system for Helldivers 2 mandatory over 100 GB of storage space. The actual installation folder would drop to around 70GB after the initial download. However, subsequent updates kept increasing the game's installation size. From the end of October 2025, Helldivers 2 The Steam page lists a storage requirement of 135GB. At the same time, the PS5 version of the game has grown from just under 25GB in February 2024 to around 35GB in September 2025. The Xbox Series X/S version, which launched this August, is comparatively compact.
Arrowhead is considering dropping Helldivers 2 HDD support to reduce PC install size
Arrowhead CEO Shams Jorjani has now confirmed that the Swedish studio is considering dropping hard disk drive (HDD) support from the PC version of the game in an attempt to bring its ever-growing install size under control. The executive characterized the possibility as something that was “being investigated” in response to a fan question posted on the official Helldivers Discord server in late October 2025. He also separately addressed some other technical questions, stating that the current Helldivers 2 performance issues will take “many more months” to resolve.
How HDD support is holding back Helldivers 2
As Arrowhead CTO Brendan Armstrong recently explained, HDD support is the main culprit Helldivers 2huge PC installation size. To compensate for the slower speeds of hard drives compared to Solid-State Drives (SSDs), the developer duplicates certain data on the drive. This reduces load times by minimizing the distance the read head must travel across the turntable 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 cures Helldivers 2 PC installation size as a higher priority issue from early September 2025, but without committing to a specific timeframe for its resolution.
Before Jorjani's encouraging update, the Swedish developer expressed his reluctance to drop HDD support, stating that he first wanted to assess how many PC gamers would be affected by such a move. The decision is not necessarily all or nothing; one potential compromise involves keeping HDD support through a separate build while offering an SSD-only version Helldivers 2 PC players with SSD.
- Released
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February 8, 2024
- ESRB
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Mature 17+ / Blood and gore, intense violence, in-game purchases, user interaction
- Developers
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Arrowhead Game Studios, Nixxes
- Publishers
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Sony Interactive Entertainment, PlayStation Publishing
Source: FRVR
