In years prior there were a lot of games and a shifting understanding of what hardware they can require. While gfx needs changed rapidly, hard drive space requirements went up steadily, predictably. As most of us have long abandoned physical media sales and use digital downloads instead, this number has stopped to be defined by the medium’s capacity.
Before and now we had outliers like MMORPGs and movie-like games requiring more estate, while other games like Deep Rock Galactic needing just 4GBs, but there always was some number of gigabytes you as a consumer thought a new game would take.
Where’s that sweet spot now for you?
For me, it’s 60GB, or a 40-80GB range. Something less or more than that causes questions and assumptions. I have a lot of space, but I’d probably decline if some game would exceed 2x of my norm or 120GB of storage.
If developers give a basic download with HD textures and english as the default language then the file size would come down drastically, then offer everything else as a separate download if required. I hate that games have gotten so damn huge and tend not to play anything over 15GB
I’m running things on a 500GB SSD drive so anything north of 100GB is a hard sell. I’m also on low-mid specs so it’s generally not much of an issue. The games I play mostly fall in the 0-5GB category but I do play the occasional 20-50GB.
One of the biggest games I’ve played on my PC is Red Dead Redemption 2 at 120GB.
Depends entirely on the quality and expected playtime. FFXIV, with a many hours long story? Load me up. Other games, where it’s 80GB+ for a <10 hour shitfest of CG puke? (No I cannot think of a good example right now, as I avoid bloated trash like the plague) Eat a dick.
As big as can fit ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
For real though, Read Dead Redemption 2 is like 120 GB but totally worth it, and Silksong is what, 1.2 GB and also totally great?
It doesn’t matter, unless it’s that one game that pushes me over the edge into needing a new motherboard because my current one can’t handle yet another hard disk. Then I get annoyed and save a little money to upgrade, then I have fun again.
I am somewhat stuck in the past. ~7mbps internet on a good day, (fast) storage is not unlimited, computer is 2019 sale parts except still using 2016 budget GPU (1050Ti).
100MiB or under: it’s free real-estate
600MiB: I can tolerate this as an average size
2GiB: common AA size, function and quality better match
15GiB+: this is probably not worth it, beyond eye-candy maybe
60GiB+: This is diminishing returns, and likely multiple technical (and arguably better) choices could have avoided such bloat.
More understandable with physical media, though my last console did not age gracefully (YLoD, another unit I got via barter runs but probably has dry thermal paste). Also I mostly play free (and/or older) games these days.
Also personally: polygons are often enough. See Spyro’s vertex color skyboxes:
still using 2016 budget GPU (1050Ti).
Check out the Intel b580, your 2019 hardware should support rebar. (An bios update might be required). It’s a phenomenal upgrade for around $250US
But I feel you on the bandwidth issue. I’ve had to give up on some games that frequently update.
Games should be less than 60 GB unless they are massive in scale (BG3) with tons of assets. Even then, they should have an option to not load the highest res textures that are used in less than 4k ultra kinds of settings since the majority of bloat is textures.
But games with a lot less going on and poor optimization are a bane on PC gaming. Helldivers 2 on PC is like 140 GB now while only 35 GB on console because of asset duplication and other poorly optimized PC choices. They really need to get that sorted out.
Currently I don’t have a real limit as I’ve gone all in on massive amounts of drive space explicitly so I can install all the games I want despite only playing two or so at a time. Previously I would really think hard about anything over 50 GB just because updates frequently added another 20+GB to the drive during the upgrade process which would sometimes hit space limits if I wasn’t paying attention.
I think 50-60 GB is a fair enough size for a larger game.
Anything more than 100 GB Feels like the devs just want to take space on my drive so I don’t play anything else
My understanding is that the vast majority of space is dedicated to high resolution textures. I don’t have a 4k monitor and I don’t need ultra high fidelity textures. Why can’t they just be an additional download rather than a required part?
I think 50gb is a fairly reasonable max size for most games.
It’s not the size, it’s a size to content/quality ratio. I’ll happily download a 500GB game if it’s got the content to match.
Uncompressed assets doesn’t bring higher quality visuals or content, it’s merely pure laziness or a scam to make people feel like they’re getting more for the outrageous price games have gotten.
Well my favorite game ever is Dwarf Fortress so it kinda depends on how long I play. The game is only like 500MB but the saves can just keep getting bigger as more stuff in the game is created.
It’s all procedurally generated except for the 16x16 pixel tile graphics.
I’d say 30 GB? Though that seems like an unattainable dream lately. I still remember when the ~4 GB San Andreas felt really huge.
Storage is cheap, and with services like gog/steam it’s easy to just uninstall if I need space and reinstall when I’m ready to play.
So what a size of a PC game you are comfortable with?
1tb
