# The biggest games in terms of disk space **URL:** \ **Category:** The Game Room\ **Tags:** video-games-e-games\ **Created:** [June 13, 2022, 7:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-biggest-games-in-terms-of-disk-space/966128 "2022-06-13T19:43:27Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 14\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![EllisDee](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ellisdee/32/4531_2.png) [@EllisDee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/EllisDee)\ **Post date:** [June 13, 2022, 7:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-biggest-games-in-terms-of-disk-space/966128/1 "2022-06-13T19:43:27Z")
As posted in the free games thread, ARK is currently free on Steam along with half a dozen DLCs for it. Steam tells me if I download the full game and all six DLCs, I need 266 GB of disk space. I thought 130-ish for Halo: The Master Chief Collection was excessive, but good lord, 266?! What other huge games are there out there? Is ARK the biggest? (Pretty sure there are more DLCs to make it even bigger.) ---
**Author:** ![Chisquirrel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/6bbea6/32.png) [@Chisquirrel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chisquirrel)\ **Post date:** [June 13, 2022, 8:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-biggest-games-in-terms-of-disk-space/966128/2 "2022-06-13T20:26:46Z")
I haven’t found anything on the level of ARK. It’s not exactly well-optimized for storage space, includes MASSIVE maps (newest one is ~400 km2, from my reading), with multiple levels and caves. I can’t think of any open-world survival games with that magnitude of scope for base assets. ---
**Author:** ![EllisDee](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ellisdee/32/4531_2.png) [@EllisDee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/EllisDee)\ **Post date:** [June 17, 2022, 12:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-biggest-games-in-terms-of-disk-space/966128/3 "2022-06-17T12:07:12Z")
Just saw an ad for ARK 2. Wonder how big that will balloon to? ---
**Author:** ![Ike\_Witt](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ike_witt/32/283_2.png) [@Ike\_Witt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ike_Witt)\ **Post date:** [June 17, 2022, 12:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-biggest-games-in-terms-of-disk-space/966128/4 "2022-06-17T12:16:06Z")
I remember about 25 to 30 years ago when I added a 600 MB drive to my computer to bring the total storage up to 1 GB. I thought that I’d never be able to fill it up… My current computer has over 10 TB of storage… ---
**Author:** ![DCnDC](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dcndc/32/2842_2.png) [@DCnDC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DCnDC)\ **Post date:** [June 17, 2022, 12:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-biggest-games-in-terms-of-disk-space/966128/5 "2022-06-17T12:59:29Z")
The biggest game I’d had on my computer for a long time was Hitman (2016) and Hitman 2, at about 150GB _each_. Through an impressive feat of compression, Hitman 3, plus all of the content from the previous two games, was whittled down to under 70GB fully installed. MS Flight Simulator displays only a few GB on Steam, but the actual game files after full download are almost 130GB. I don’t own it but I hear DCS World can top 250GB. ---
**Author:** ![Skywatcher](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/skywatcher/32/254_2.png) [@Skywatcher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Skywatcher)\ **Post date:** [June 17, 2022, 1:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-biggest-games-in-terms-of-disk-space/966128/6 "2022-06-17T13:15:11Z")
How about the largest number of floppies? I had some limited edition of _Harpoon_ that came on ~20 3½s, at least one of which was defective so I never got to play the thing. ---
**Author:** ![Babale](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/babale/32/15666_2.png) [@Babale](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Babale)\ **Post date:** [June 17, 2022, 3:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-biggest-games-in-terms-of-disk-space/966128/7 "2022-06-17T15:40:14Z")
> [@EllisDee](#): > > Just saw an ad for ARK 2. Wonder how big that will balloon to? Hopefully they make their map files more efficient and the maps actually take less room on the hard drive. ---
**Author:** ![KMS94](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ad7895/32.png) [@KMS94](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/KMS94)\ **Post date:** [June 17, 2022, 3:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-biggest-games-in-terms-of-disk-space/966128/8 "2022-06-17T15:45:35Z")
I can still vividly remember, while buying a new PC at Staples back in the '90s, the salesman describing the 1 gig hard drive, and telling me I’d “never live long enough to fill it up.” 😀 ---
**Author:** ![DCnDC](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dcndc/32/2842_2.png) [@DCnDC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DCnDC)\ **Post date:** [June 17, 2022, 3:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-biggest-games-in-terms-of-disk-space/966128/9 "2022-06-17T15:57:10Z")
I remember when “640K ought to be enough [RAM] for anybody.” 😉 (usually attributed to Bill Gates, but it’s always been questionable whether or not that’s an actual quote from anybody) ---
**Author:** ![Asuka](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/dec6dc/32.png) [@Asuka](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Asuka)\ **Post date:** [June 19, 2022, 8:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-biggest-games-in-terms-of-disk-space/966128/10 "2022-06-19T20:47:09Z")
I’ll have to double check when I get home but my Call of Duty Black Ops Cold War on PS5 with all updates and DLCs is over 250GBs. ---
**Author:** ![EllisDee](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ellisdee/32/4531_2.png) [@EllisDee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/EllisDee)\ **Post date:** [June 22, 2022, 4:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-biggest-games-in-terms-of-disk-space/966128/11 "2022-06-22T04:44:40Z")
Yeah, turns out call of duty is pretty fucking big. I just saw somebody call out Warzone in a discussion over an 8 TB M.2 drive. (‘You could actually install Warzone!’) I dug up a cite: > **[Warzone dev says game is losing players over “insane” download sizes](https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2022/03/warzone-dev-says-game-is-losing-players-over-insane-download-sizes/)** > > Modern Warfare/Warzone pack can take up to 250GB on PC. > [@](#): > > Activision says you need a whopping 175GB of hard drive space on PC for a Warzone install. On Xbox, the base download is listed at nearly 92GB, similar to the size on PlayStation systems. Adding Modern Warfare onto the Warzone package increases the total size to about 250GB on PC and 150GB on consoles. ---
**Author:** ![nightshadea](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/7ba0ec/32.png) [@nightshadea](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nightshadea)\ **Post date:** [June 22, 2022, 4:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-biggest-games-in-terms-of-disk-space/966128/12 "2022-06-22T04:55:01Z")
return to zork had somewhere between 30 and 40 floppies and there was a defect in some of them because when you bought a cd rom drive (lol 4X the fastest in 1994) circuit city would give you the cd version if you returned it it would either be the sims 4 or someone posted a train sim game that had so many route pack expansions it would be around 10 grand for the entire game ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [June 22, 2022, 6:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-biggest-games-in-terms-of-disk-space/966128/13 "2022-06-22T06:01:08Z")
If you download Sim Universe it would be wise to take the Magellan Cloud storage option. 🙃 ---
**Author:** ![Hoopy\_Frood](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hoopy_frood/32/8452_2.png) [@Hoopy\_Frood](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hoopy_Frood)\ **Post date:** [June 23, 2022, 4:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-biggest-games-in-terms-of-disk-space/966128/14 "2022-06-23T04:14:25Z")
> [@nightshadea](#): > > return to zork had somewhere between 30 and 40 floppies > and there was a defect in some of them because when you bought a cd rom drive (lol 4X the fastest in 1994) > circuit city would give you the cd version if you returned it It wasn’t that high, it was only 12 as I recall (I had the CD-ROM version). However, the floppy disks lacked the video scenes, apparently. (It’s possible they might have released a later version on floppy with the video intact, which might explain the 30-40 floppies.)