What's the difference between these builds?
this post was submitted on 05 Mar 2026
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Helldivers 2
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The large build contains a ton of duplicate data in an attempt to optimize for hard drives and is roughly 150 GB, the slim build cuts out the duplicate data and is closer to 30 GB.
That's weird, the game is only 23GB here?
Yep that’s the slim one, which is the default one now, even my 30 GB estimate was too big haha
As long as you don't break it on Linux I will be happy.
Don’t even know if I’m using smaller or larger build to be honest.
Until they push this update to remove the larger build entirely, you can select the slim version by going to the game properties and checking the beta builds. It’s the “slim_prod” option.
In your Steam game menu, you should also see “[slim_prod]” next to the Helldivers listing.
No wonder it was still ~130GB when I reinstalled recently expecting it to be half that. I was not aware it wasn't pushed out to the normal install.
I did that a while ago. Do I have to undo that, once they get rid of the fat version?
I’m not sure. I’d guess when they make the slim version the main branch (and thus no more prod_slim beta), Steam will just remove the beta and install the main version.
Good to know. I’ll verify this. Thank you.
Think the teeny one has been default for a bit now
Well if it installed itself on one of the previous updates, I haven’t noticed a single issue either.
You still have to opt in, theyr probably doing this cuz near everyone did
No, I think they shifted that to the standard one. I don't know why they kept the "slim" beta around, though.