The biggest games by install size, real mighty storage hogs

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Now these are some mega file directories. Phwoar!

Install size graph
(Image credit: Future)

It's been a year since I last looked into the mightiest storage hogs on the market, but I'm back and these games are bigger than ever. Inevitably there are some new additions to this list for 2021, those games that just can't help but suck an entire SSD dry, and they must be corralled up and logged, in the name of science. 

I've been searching around to find the most byte-breakingly big games on the planet today. My journey has taken me across land and launcher to find the most expansive, detailed, or simply downright massive game install directories you may find on your gaming PC—some so chunky that they often won't fit on 128GB SSDs. Hell, some are too dense for even 256GB drives.

I'll admit I cheated a little the first time around by tweeting out 'Which game takes up the most storage space on your PC right now?' on the PC Gamer Twitter account. Thank you to everyone that got back to me—except you, person that said Chip's Challenge. This year I've done something similar, and I've bothered the PC Gamer staff and checked over the comments to find out what you all have suggested.

And of course I've checked my own gaming PC's many libraries, though turns out point and click detective games don't actually take up much space.

It's pretty unlikely that you're searching for the biggest games with which to load up your gaming PC, but considering some of today's storage-battering games are also the most popular—Call of Duty and Forza Horizon 5, for example—it can be difficult to avoid byte-hungry applications eating away at your new SSD.

If you've got to be careful where or to what you allocate your precious bits to, then there's likely some use in knowing which games are storage hogs before you drop $50 on one. This is a public service after all.

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All game install sizes are correct at the time when I checked, and only relevant to PC. These are likely subject to change over the year, especially considering how some game developers are mastering the art of dark magic and somehow shaving install sizes down to a fraction of what they once were. 

Fortnite, for example, shaved 60GB off the overall game install size, taking it down to around 30GB overall. Tim Sweeney's probably awoken some great evil and doomed us all to the Seventh Circle of Hell to do it, but it's a great move for budget-friendly Fortnite PC builds in the meantime. Both Battlefield and Call of Duty appear to have managed similar feats in 2021, too.

The list before you isn't the be-all and end-all of storage hogs, but it should give you a bloody good idea. There are also heaps of games with mods, maps, and DLCs that can really help push up those numbers, too, so even some of these whoppers aren't as big as they come.

The largest game install sizes (in ascending order)

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64GB - Death Stranding
Mostly just for rendering an accurate depiction of Norman Reedus' face, as Kojima Productions is contractually obliged to.

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64GB - Hitman 3
Considering Hitman 2 is a top-tier hog, the fact Hitman 3's expertly-crafted levels are only 64GB is quite a feat.

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67GB - World of Warcraft
As it stands today, World of Warcraft is a fairly chunky beast at 67GB. That's likely to increase once Shadowlands rolls around later this year, too.

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68GB - Half-Life: Alyx
This one's easy: It's a virtual reality game, Valve had to be careful to render the bottoms of objects and under tables just in case you pesky gamers took a peek behind the curtain.

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70GB - Metro Exodus
Despite previous Metro games taking place mostly within a metro tunnel, there's quite a bit more to this one. It's also gorgeous in that messed up, gritty way.

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73GB - Destiny 2
Bungie has actually dropped Destiny 2's file size since
I last updated this list, meaning it's lost some hog credentials. 

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77GB - Forza Horizon 4
It's never a surprise to see a car game hogging lots of storage space. There's a whole subgenre of racing games dedicated to just looking at fancy cars, so they must be up to a high standard.

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78GB - Call of Duty: Warzone
Warzone alone actually isn't stupendously massive, but combined with this year's hot COD it can get rather unsightly.

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82GB - Baldur's Gate 3
We're only one act in and the game is already 82GB. This one is surely going to surge up this list by the time it leaves early access.

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86GB - Final Fantasy XV
Most of that 86GB is made up of hair styles for those four moody-looking lads.

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86GB - Gears 5
Microsoft may have ditched the 'of War' but that still leaves plenty of big, heavy gears lying around—86GB worth.

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89GB - Battlefield V
Grand operations really cranked up the scale of Battlefield's already sizeable multiplayer, and install size ballooned alongside all the nifty new game modes and features.

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90GB - Grand Theft Auto 5
What is there left to say about GTA 5 at this point? Oh, nothing. Moving on.

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94GB - Vermintide 2
Basically Destiny but with rats, so it's not all that surprising to see it nearly match Destiny 2 in game install size.

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102GB - Forza Horizon 5
It's not just one better than Forza Horizon 4, it's 25GB bigger.

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108GB - Dirt Rally 2.0
All that dirt takes up a lot of space. Nothing more to it.

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110GB - Assassin's Creed: Odyssey
You could visit Greece during a global pandemic or you could play Assassin's Creed: Odyssey and get nearly the same experience. That's a lie but it is a pretty game, and huge.

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112GB - ARK: Survival Evolved
I didn't see this one coming, but apparently ARK isn't all about wooden shacks and dinosaur friends anymore. There's now over 100GB of miscellaneous island content, and even more than that if you fancy it.

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116GB - Borderlands 3
All those uncompressed Claptrap jokes make for a mighty install. Sorry, "jokes".

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116GB - Red Dead Redemption 2
There is an overwhelming level of detail to near-enough every aspect of Red Dead Redemption 2, right the way down to the horse balls. Am I allowed to say horse balls?

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127GB - Microsoft Flight Simulator
Planet Earth on a 1:1 scale, enough said.

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131GB - Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six: Siege (with HD texture packs)
R6 Siege is a welterweight of epic proportions, with or without the HD texture packs. But let's throw them in for good measure.

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133GB - Assassin's Creed: Valhalla
You thought Odyssey was big? Oh, you fool. Valhalla has like way more bytes than that, but doesn't it look great for it.

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149GB - Hitman 2
No, really. With all the DLC, Hitman 2 essentially includes Hitman, and that means a whole other game's worth of textures and other digitally heavy things. Outfits and such.

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170GB - Medal of Honor: Above and Beyond
Incredibly, this VR game manages to demand 170GB of storage space. That makes it one of the meatiest games ever, let alone out of virtual reality titles.

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120–250GB - DCS World
You thought the other plane game was big? Think again. Even without all the extras, this digital combat simulator is big. With them, it's massive. The mightiest hog.

Honourable mentions

While the base games of all four of these titles aren't all that massive, comparatively anyways, you could certainly make them that way in a flash. All it takes is a mod manager and a trigger finger...

  • Skyrim
  • Gary's Mod
  • Assetto Corsa
  • Fallout 4
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Jacob Ridley
Jacob Ridley
Managing Editor, Hardware

Jacob earned his first byline writing for his own tech blog. From there, he graduated to professionally breaking things as hardware writer at PCGamesN, and would go on to run the team as hardware editor. He joined PC Gamer's top staff as senior hardware editor before becoming managing editor of the hardware team, and you'll now find him reporting on the latest developments in the technology and gaming industries and testing the newest PC components.

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