Ah, yes. The “let’s bloat our game size to bully other games off your SSD so you’ll be reluctant to ever uninstall it, because reinstalling it would be a big pain, that way you’ll play it indefinitely and give us extra money in micro transactions” strategy.
It’s huge because studios don’t optimize anymore
I would agree that most studios dont optimize well, however i still remember how small elden rings download was compared to how sprawling the game world ended up being. It was mind numbing every time the map would double in size with each new area, then to find there was even an underside to the map… it just was perfect.
How do you imagine optimizing image and video assets for 4K+ screens?
Make them optional lmao. I dont have a 4k screen, havent ever had one, and wont buy one for a very long time. Why am i storing these assets i will never use?
That’s a good idea, but not always viable. Most content delivery systems don’t support optional assets. Also it is impossible to know in advance what do you need. Before the game is launched, it doesn’t know that you don’t have a 4K screen.
And storage prices are so low today, why do you even bother? Just buy an 8 TB drive or two and forget about it.
There are MANY games from half a decade ago + that just have 4k textures as an additional free dlc, or a setting to download them in game, definitely easy to support by the multi dollar company behind COD
Most people play on consoles. Most consoles are hooked to 4K TVs. 4K assets are essential, they cannot be DLCed. Unless you want a scandal that PC version comes with shittier assets than a console version.
The real problem here is not the size of the game, the real problem is that it turned out that PC gamers are stuck in stone age playing 1080p while bragging about higher picture quality for decades.
How are they essential when most consoles aren’t 4k capable. Switch, Series S, PS4 they all look fine on a 4k TV. Games on Series S even take less storage space, because they don’t use 4k assets.
Last gen consoles are 4K capable, all current gen consoles are 4K. What are you talking about?
Steam or whatever launcher could still ask the resolution I want to use before it starts downloading. If the player changes their mind, then they can download higher resolution assets later.
Diablo 2 back in the day would ask which resolution I want to play on in its installer.
See my answer above https://lemmy.world/comment/5054278
Jpegxl. Also most of the filesize is gonna be the direct draw surface files .DDS, which are GPU decompressable meaning they’re about 25 times bigger than something properly compressed like .jxl, and that’s just with lossless compression. I tried writing a script for a few games to compress them using this and it made them massively smaller but also takes a while to decompress so there’s an intermediate that needs to be found (which I’m looking into).
The game is probably using DirectStorage, they can’t use JpegXL.
Probably the same way modders have been doing it for decades when bringing older games up to modern standards.
Modders rarely bring crisp textures which will look good on 4K. I haven’t seen anything myself.
I don’t think I have seen anything of note from AAA developers either. I don’t play every single game that comes out though and mostly focus on things easy to get back into when work keeps me off games for several weeks.
There is a likelyhood that the games I have played weren’t made with 4k in mind even if the game can display at the resolution though.