For example, both Final Fantasy XVI & STALKER 2 take up 152GB & 165GB on my 2TB external SSD. I mean, why are steam games HUGE as f*ck regarding their file sizes lately? Don’t even mention CoD (200GB?!), even with the fastest internet connection: you can’t bypass patience as these things take up time. For me, it took me about 2 days to finish (pause & resume download). I’ve finished installing KCD II (Royal Edition) and that was 85GB (took up 8-12 hours with fast internet, I was binge watching a TV show on Prime Video the entire time).
They optimized for things other than install size. Optimization is often choosing one thing at the expense of others.
they optimized for least effort.
When time is money, optimizing for time is a worthwhile endeavor. 6+ year dev cycles aren’t something anyone wants. But realistically, large file sizes probably aren’t going away with more dev time.