Bigger Than Godzilla: Why Are Games Using So Many Gigabytes?

[rmcrys]

I echo that I would love to see installers become smarter (or just give us the option) of only downloading and installing the bits of the game that are relevant to us. If I only want English cut scenes and audio, I should be able to download and install only the English files. If I am playing on a GTX 1060, I don't need to download and install the 8K texture packs.

I can always buy more storage, that isn't an issue. But having to wait 6 hours to download a 100GB game gets old. Waiting 3 hrs for the 50GB 'patch' to download is even worse.

Exactly.

As storage and internet speed have been increasing and more widely available, game companies have been more inefficient as that costs time and money.

Optimizations could be better but most GPUs don't decode newer formats (av1, x265) fast enough to use them on games. If you are feeding a gpu with tons of detailed textures, they must be easy on compression algorithms.

Installers should be optimized: they should offer a good enough standard sized texture pack (that runs well up to mid-range 8 GB VRAM cards) and offer extra a high detail texture pack for high-end GPUs (12 GB and up). If I own a 3060ti with 8 GB VRAM, why would I care about textures that are just usable on 16 GB VRAM and on GPUs that are really 4K or 8K capable?

 

[azicat]

Ahh I remember when Chris Roberts' Strike Commander came out with 8 floppy disks and needing 42MB hard drive space. Blew my mind, when Wing Commander was on 3.

 

[Angga B]

The size is already an "annoyance" but the required periodical update also "annoy". Some games makes it quite reasonable in update size, max 1-2 GB. But some games requires update in the almost exact same size it was installed in the first place, in the order of 30>GB.
Are the developers were drunk???

 

[KofeViR]

You have no idea...

How many hours? I spend 150 hours, however no mods tested and waiting for DLC

 

[Trapped Nowhere]

File sizes are increasing, while quality remains stagnant and in game purchases infect every thing

 

[guillejp]

yes, compressed, but how?
with a mere bzip?
I don't have TLOU at hand to check it.
Imagine if they are just bzip compressed WAVs, instead of using a specialized compressor like WAVPac or FLAC, if they want it to be lossless. but even more, they could be lossy compressed, just the permissible, and they would be even smaller files.
The games that at one time I supercompressed myself, some were like that, had the voices in wav, so in the compression script I recoded them to AAC, just like the music. the effects were left untouched. but then I used UHARC, which has subroutines dedicated to compressing multimedia, to compress the rest of media files. Other files were compressed with 7zip. during the decompression everything returned to its original formats.
I remember some supercompressed game that, whoever made it, recompressed the textures in another format and during the "installation"/decompression reconverted them to the original texture format.
Of course, all this only saves on the installer files, in the end everything is occupying the same space. but a lot can be compressed in a way that is suitable for each context of use and type of file.

but some different examples, Crysis 1 and Crysis Warhead, the first Call of Duty MW series and earlier CoD, and other games, their files are Zip compressed but with little or no compression, only used as containers. so, in my "decompressor" I compressed them to the maximum that zip would allow. That's why I ended up with a lot of games sometimes taking up only half of the disk space, with only a slight increase in load times.

Even Quake 3 back then had many of its textures in JPEG.

Then, I've seen UV textures maps that are absolute wasteful. either the artists are lazy or the tools are rubbish.

on of those game that I have ever seen that deliver more content in less space are the Elder Scrolls and the Fallout series

Has anyone here played .kkrieger?

Oooh kkrieger! I was trying to remember that name a couple days ago! Thanks!

 

[neeyik]

yes, compressed, but how?
with a mere bzip?
I don't have TLOU at hand to check it.
Imagine if they are just bzip compressed WAVs, instead of using a specialized compressor like WAVPac or FLAC, if they want it to be lossless. but even more, they could be lossy compressed, just the permissible, and they would be even smaller files.

I didn't test the speech/movies packs, just the rendering assets. Sony's psarc format uses zlib or lzma in the older systems, not so sure about now. I just did a pretty simple check, to be honest -- used 7-Zip with LZMA2 on maximum compression and a 256MB dictionary size.

 

[BrendonKoz]

I guess I am going to feel like the adult in the room and just say OMFG... if some of you people care this much about space, put an extra $20-$40 & get a bigger SSD.

I have 3 2TB SSDs and one 500GB HDD for low-speed storage (essentially my archived downloads for future reinstalls after a reformat). Despite my storage ability, when running a Windows OS (currently preferred as a gaming PC), the registry and file system eventually get junked up. So the less that I have to install and uninstall games to fit them all is essential. I like to be able to sit down and play, not have to (re)download a game for 20-90 minutes in order to play. So when the games are reaching 150GB+, it's concerning.

(NOTE: My PC isn't a dedicated gaming PC. I also do software development, run virtual machines/servers, and to a lesser degree do video and photography editing on it.)

.kkreiger: Yup, absolutely. I was thinking of that while reading through all of the comments.

 

[Alfonso Maruccia]

How many hours? I spend 150 hours, however no mods tested and waiting for DLC

According to Steam, 352,7 hours (40/42 achievements, in NG+1). The first 20 hours were the tutorial, though :-D

 

[Alfonso Maruccia]

I think I do, LetMeSoloHer

Wait, what... You're LetMeSoloHer?!? Yeah, no effin' way I'll believe you :-D

 

[MakeMSGreatAgain]

Honestly I feel it is worth it... we are getting something for it. Games like RDR2 are amazingly beautiful and warrant their storage requirements.I'm happy to pay for more storage as the prices have been pretty good - I just keep buying more and more. Some options when downloading would be nice though, for those of us who don't want everything like high res texture and language packs.

 

[hwertz]

Welp, I'm not too worried -- due to the radically lower price/GB, I have been skipping SSDs and continuing to get HDD storage.

My notebook has a 1TB SSD (I ordered it with a 250GB and it came with 1TB for some reason.. fine with me!) and 1TB HDD (and I can get a 8TB notebook HDD for $99 to stick in there). My desktop has a smaller boot drive*, a 4TB USB external, and 18TB SATA HDD in there. I have PLENTY of free space no matter how big the games get!

*The machine came with two 250GB HDDs, which I have not removed. I went to replace one with a SSD, but I got one of those trash "cacheless" SSDs for like $20 and burned it out in under 3 months of usage. Now I know, don't get the cacheless ones even if they are temptingly cheap!

Edit: What I've done on a few systems, like one my mom had been using... it came with a 24GB SSD and 750GB HDD. So I installed Ubuntu to the SSD *BUT* set it to put /home on the HDD.. (I assumed this was an eMMC module or something, to my shock it actually is just a really low capacity M.2 SSD). This lets it boot, load software, and do updates nice and fast, while all downloads, and game installs end up in the home directory (on the hard drive). Cruicially for gaming (which this computer wasn't used for but still), Steam Library, Heroic Games Launcher (and Epic Games Store), and anything you use directly with wine, that ALL goes in the home directory so it ends up on the HDD.

 

[KofeViR]

According to Steam, 352,7 hours (40/42 achievements, in NG+1). The first 20 hours were the tutorial, though :-D

Haha yes, it's a great game. Many people give up in the first hours tho. It's a hell of game. I hope DLC will be huge, more like a true expansion with several new areas to explore.

 

[calvinblanes]

Smart gamers also judge the quality of the games by the size they NEED.

HD textures, even ultra and high quality should be always optional.

I don't care about ultra quality in games I barely even play, like MK11 that's taking about 120 GB of my disk.

Some games like Deep Rock Galactic are about 2 GB and are as good as most from the top.

 

[Hodor]

It's a funny thing that games mostly don't use JPG files for textures, or JPG2000 for transparent textures. Nope. They use DXT, ASTC and other formats that are directly supported in hardware, but unfortunately produce really big files. Those files are many times bigger than JPEG (and I'm talking about 90% quality JPEG, which is bigger than usual, but still very small).

Most of games now finally use OGG for audio compression, which is good, but when it comes to textures they are still limited to non-optimal formats. That has to change.

 

[neeyik]

It's a funny thing that games mostly don't use JPG files for textures, or JPG2000 for transparent textures. Nope. They use DXT, ASTC and other formats that are directly supported in hardware, but unfortunately produce really big files. Those files are many times bigger than JPEG (and I'm talking about 90% quality JPEG, which is bigger than usual, but still very small).

Most of games now finally use OGG for audio compression, which is good, but when it comes to textures they are still limited to non-optimal formats. That has to change.

What you gain with memory footprint by using something like jpegs is then countered by the fact that it's not a block compression. Texture sampling is always done with a 4x4 pixel kernel, which is the same size as the blocks used in BC1-BC7, thus helping reduce bandwidth usage. If the performance of a GPU wasn't impacted in any way by this (and managing the non-linear manner of jpegs was a piece of cake or automated somehow), then every game would be using jpegs for textures.

 

[m3tavision]

I have 3 2TB SSDs and one 500GB HDD for low-speed storage (essentially my archived downloads for future reinstalls after a reformat). Despite my storage ability, when running a Windows OS (currently preferred as a gaming PC), the registry and file system eventually get junked up. So the less that I have to install and uninstall games to fit them all is essential. I like to be able to sit down and play, not have to (re)download a game for 20-90 minutes in order to play. So when the games are reaching 150GB+, it's concerning.

(NOTE: My PC isn't a dedicated gaming PC. I also do software development, run virtual machines/servers, and to a lesser degree do video and photography editing on it.)

.kkreiger: Yup, absolutely. I was thinking of that while reading through all of the comments.

Yeah, as you said, most of your space is for your work drives for videos/photos, etc... Which could all be external/NAS or a storage drive. As a Gamer how big is your library of your top 10 most played games..?

I bet they all fit on a $160 SSD (4TB)...

 

[kinetix]

What you gain with memory footprint by using something like jpegs is then countered by the fact that it's not a block compression. Texture sampling is always done with a 4x4 pixel kernel, which is the same size as the blocks used in BC1-BC7, thus helping reduce bandwidth usage. If the performance of a GPU wasn't impacted in any way by this (and managing the non-linear manner of jpegs was a piece of cake or automated somehow), then every game would be using jpegs for textures.

textures can be converted at load time. of course this has a higher cost/computing need, that's why they already come precompressed in DXT etc. but with some dedicated hardware this would be very interesting. I don't know (I would have to search) if someone does this on the GPU, since it is usually done at the driver level on the CPU. I remember that Quake 3 had its textures, at least a good part, in JPG format.

 

[neeyik]

textures can be converted at load time. of course this has a higher cost/computing need, that's why they already come precompressed in DXT etc. but with some dedicated hardware this would be very interesting. I don't know (I would have to search) if someone does this on the GPU, since it is usually done at the driver level on the CPU.

I'm not convinced that converting jpegs into a DX BCn format, be it done on hardware or otherwise, would be a welcomed idea, in this era -- neither are lossless algorithms, after all.

I remember that Quake 3 had its textures, at least a good part, in JPG format.

With the rest being tga. S3TC could be enabled with a bit of console toggling, giving relevant GPUs a nice performance boost (because of the use of block compression) but also a reduction in visual quality, because a compression image is then getting compressed again, and BC1 is the worst looking version of them all (though it was the only one supported on hardware at that time, I think).

 

[Julnor]

Audio is large too. Sure it's compressed but especially if everything is voice acted, and especially video cut scenes, it's going to take up a chunk of size with how big these games are. Further if you have multiple languages.

My Skyrim AE install is 50 GB and I don't even have the biggest texture pack installed (I'm sure that would add some size, I tried it but my GPU is only 8 GB VRAM right now and those bigger textures use more than that--they look great though). I'd expect newer released professionally done games to be even bigger. And they are of course.