Overview

• The PC installation is around 150 GB, roughly triple the console versions, largely due to deliberate data duplication to speed loading on mechanical hard drives.
• Eliminating duplication outright would make HDD loading about 10 times slower, which would hold up entire squads since mission start waits on the slowest player.
• The next update includes unused‑asset sweeps that prevent further growth of the install but are not expected to produce a noticeable size reduction.
• Medium‑term testing focuses on bundling very common assets to cut duplication, with early results targeting less than 30 seconds of extra load time for HDD users and a possible increase in RAM use.
• Longer‑term work explores engine changes and speculative compression, and the team notes it lacks reliable data on HDD usage among players, with a rough internal estimate near 12%.