As video games become more and more complex, the game sizes are getting bigger and bigger too. Star Citizen might set a new record, though, as the game could be a whopping 100GB.
Robert Space Industries developer “JMasker” recently clarified what players can expect when the first major version of the game is available for download — right now, it’s expected in 2016. A user figured the client might be only 30 or 40GB in size, but JMasker quickly put that to rest.
“As I have already said, I would not count on this. The game compression and asset removal is unlikely to yield such high gains that we will be able to reduce our client size to 30-40gb. The size and number of assets that are left to deliver means that our client size is much more likely to be 100gb.”
It’s not surprise the patches will be enormous, either. Have a new hard drive?
“Also, yes we are optimising game patching for speed and to only deliver diffs, but this is unlikely to reduce actual patch size. Again, each patch has 100s of assets, each of these assets are at times 200mb, this leads to 2-6gb patches, and if we end up doing a file type re-factor and have to re-download 30-40% of the assets on the hard-drive, then the patch will be 14-20gb.”
The developer said the game might ship on a USB drive for people with slower Internet connections, but it’s unlikely the whole footprint could be sent, given the nature of the game.
“Hey Isogen, the USB drive can still happen, it would just contain a subset of the game. Like a starter package.
We are not a normal PC game with a “finished” data set that is Gold Master’ed and put on a DVD or Blu-Ray. So anything that is a download from physical media will likely only be a partial package that will need updating from the launcher.”
My PC is not ready for this game. At all.
By comparison, The Elder Scrolls Online was a 60GB download on PC, while Grand Theft Auto V on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One was 50GB. The recent Heists add-on for Grand Theft Auto V was 4GB (at least on newer consoles), while The Elder Scroll Online‘s latest patch was 20GB!
Comments
45 responses to “Star Citizen Might Take Up At Least 100GB”
Hopefully 100GB well spent.
100gb!! I can’t see myself getting this because a) the download size and b) giving up that much space. Sure it may have HEAPS of content. But that is ridiculous. What if it doesn’t run well on my computer. What if I am not having fun with it. All that data and space wasted. I was put off playing ESO because of the required space and because of how bland is was. Best of luck to these guys making it but I am now officially done with it.
Note: I could just get the USB version if they decide to go down that route but, I don’t have the ports to do so, all mine are filled.
I could be wrong but I think you’ll still have to install the data from the usb so it won’t have to be connected to your pc all the time. I agree with you 100gb is a lot plus the updates. You’ll have to buy an ssd just for one game!
I have 3 Harddrives, i have my 240GB SSD then a 1TB HDD then a 2TB external. But I need all the space on those (Hard to believe) my exernal has all my recordings so that is alwasy filling up. My SSD I try to keep free of crap and my 1TB HDD is already halfway full so i am really not keen on smacking 100Gb plus the updates. I’ll just lose all my space.
EDIT: That is a fuck tonne of space but, majority of it is needed.
Might be worth investing in a second SSD? If you were happy with slower boot speeds, a basic 100gb external is like 20-30 bucks.
And let’s face it, 100gb is 3% of your available space… not so much in the grand scheme of things.
I don’t think I am that invested in this game in order to do that. I suppose if all my friends get it then I may cave in and do that.
You do know you can delete the game to get back that space! 🙂 I agree with the wasted download though as I’m on a 100gb monthly cap! I would also take about 3 years to download with the speed my connection runs at!
Yeah, but it seems like such a time waste. Just to play this game when I could play Elite Dangerous, its something a lot of my friends are currently playing and the file size is a lot smaller.
EDIT: I guess I will just have to wait and see what they decide to do. Because at the end of the day 100gb is 100gb and alot of people will have trouble with that.
Hate to point out the boring facts, you people seems intelligent, BF4 is 57.5Gb released in 2013, and it was a fuckup from the beginning, Star Citizen (Chris Roberts) said that the game was going to be massive, 100Gb is nothing, I can download 500gb in one day easy. Games in the next few years will be 100gb-200gb maybe even more, open you fucking eyes bro. its going to happen – even if you dont see it.
then get another Hard drive its obvious you think you don’t have enough space.
But the thing is, i don’t WANT to have to go out and buy another hard drive just to play 1 game.
yeah but if you think you are running out of space you will need to get one soon anyway, plus SC wont come out for like a year anyway
Personally I got a 240gb SSD, a 1 tb and a 3 tb in my comp atm
The year was 1998, the game was Starcraft, the hard disk was just over 1GB. Though some do forget, but games on CD back in the late 90’s took up a ton of hard disk space. Starcraft easily took up a significant chunk of available space…..but it was worth it.
SSD’s aside, most people have at least a 500GB HDD so a 100GB game is not that much of a stretch. My Steam library drive is 1.5TB and my main SSD is 512GB, both of which mean that it is possible (with some trimming) to play this game.
When people go and be amazed about the amount of space this takes up, remember that it is relative to hard drive capacity. I can buy a 2TB drive cheap, sure it won’t be as fast as an SSD, but it will do the job.
100 gig well spent I reckon
100GB is nothing considering that right now for $140 you can buy a 7200RPM+ 3TB platter drive and this game is set to release next year so HDD will be even cheaper.
100GB is pretty significant when using an SSD, the cost per GB is still nowhere near mechanical hard drives. My current 120GB SSD would probably not be able to have Windows and this game installed at the same time.
SSD’s are not designed to be used for running games as this uses a lot of the limited read/write cycles of the storage chips used.
SSDs are perfect for running games, and although the writing lifespan is still true to this day, it’s now 2015. SSD’s have gotten a lot better. Heck, you can go buy yourself a 1TB SSD now. Imagine the lifespan on that thing.
Sure they have a writing lifespan, but they’ll outlive and outperform a mechanical drive anyday.
Anyway, you shouldn’t freak out about SSD lifespans, and I’ll give you an example why.
I have one of these;
http://www.anandtech.com/show/4010/kingston-ssdnow-v-plus-100-review
It’s 64GB in size, sata 2 version to be precise.
Been using it, all alone, for a minecraft server, a domain controller, a print server, and a hyper-v host.
When I bought it, I was using Windows Server 2008 R2 Enterprise.
Today it’s using Windows Server 2012 R2 Datacentre.
I’ve formatted it a few times. It’s still alive and kicking, and Minecraft writes data every single second when someone is playing.
Sure, I’ve been told my SSD will die, but I bought the thing for speed.
No point in buying it, and then not fully utilizing its purpose.
It will eventually die some day (or year) and I’ll just buy another SSD.
That is really not true, as @jiggle_counter said SSDs are perfect for running games. The point where an SSD becomes unreliable is determined by the endurance rating, and the write/erase cycles are huge on modern SSDs. Going by the manufacturers guidelines, my drive would last around 20 years if I was writing/erasing 50GB of data a day, which I don’t do. Reading from the drive does not wear it out at all.
The way people talk about them my SDD should have turned to dust by now.
SSDs are fine for games, id be more worried about windows deciding to keep a page file on one 😛
Based on my current usage vs the specifications of my 250gb 850 evo ssd, it will last another 10 years minimum, and by that time i think ill have replaced it 😛
With my current internet connection it would take 14 days of straight downloading, not to mention it’s double my cap.
I need FTN/P 🙁
Got a friend with an uncapped plan? Buy them a 6 pack, hand them an external, and the game is yours!
This is a seriously good idea, I need to make more friends 😛
No surprise, the assets for the game are huge. The current alpha client already uses 21gb.
That is of course assuming the game gets released.
The spread of what they want to deliver now is simply insane. Go back and just release a space combat sim, get that perfect, then expand out to all the other stuff. I don’t want a FPS (but sure, make one and link it in later) I want a decent space combat game.
there already is a space combat game released in the module Arena commander.
I have one spare SSD mount, looks like it’ll be my SCSSD…
The space I’ve got. Two gaming machines with a combined total of 5TB between them. Not a challenge.
This is why I’m thankful I’m still in the FTTP NBN construction zone (it commences this month – a full year after expected).
It’s also looking like only 3 computers on the planet will be able to run it.
I loooooove space sim…. But i’m skeptical.
Even if there is a physical release, the idea of 20 GB patches makes the game a no go for me ;_;
Agreed
You could say that this installation is….
ASTRONOMICAL *puts pinky in mouth*
i would not care if it was 200gb lol, I will get this no matter what
Good thing it’s not on consoles then..
Ehh.. with a size like that I’m not going to buy it, at least no until my next upgrade in 5 or so years.
how the hell is this too big of a game? how big did you expect it to be with the scope and detail this game had.
With multiple terabytes being so common, the only issue really is the download size. I’d still have most of my 2 TB hard drive empty after installing this 😛
Lucky we don’t use the 3.5″ floppy disks any more. I’d need a shipping container to store the game in. Imagine the install time…
You’d wear the drive out just with the putting discs in an ejecting them and it would take months!
My 18tb RAID array is ready!
And to think by space-sim loving buddies were griefing me for building this new rig with 3.5 TB internal and a shit-tonne of RAM. Who’s laughing now, huh?!
they will be soon once they build their own new rigs when the game releases with better specs at the same price.
I doubt it. I was the last one in my group of mates to build one and 2 of the 3 threw down some decent cash (around 5k territory) for theirs, where as I did mine on the (relative) cheap, mostly DIY, for a comparable system at less than half the price. Only thing I really screwed up was the cooling. The fans are a bit loud for my taste when it gets a bit hot. But meh… open panel and a small portable fan, problem solved. Though those mineral oil fish tanks are pretty groovy.
That said though, I was figuring I was prolly going to have to build a new rig around the time this is released. I don’t see anything current being able to keep up with SC for long.
I kinda like this. I remember when Wing Commander 2 came out and people were bitching because with the speech pack installed it came to 25mb which was most of a 40mb drive, which was what most people had had at the time!
Chris Roberts, still pushing the limits of tech!
The cool thing is by the time it comes out I’ll probably have upgraded again anyway.
I’ve got a 128gb ssd for games but I try to not go over 2/3rds capacity on SSDs so it’s useless for this.
I have a 256gb ssd I use for the operating system and video editing. Again. Useless for this.
I have a 500GB hdd I use for everything else. Depends on load times whether I’ll use it or not.
I also have an ANCIENT 320GB hdd that seriously, has to be 7 years old that I’ve been expecting to die for ages that I just use for videos.
Looks like I need to get a new drive anyway. But when I read back on this post, I realise how spoilt we are for tech these days. I’m not complaining. It’s an exciting time.