well space is mostly empty /s

And starfield could easily be way larger. The textures in Starfield aren’t actually that high res (part of why, despite it being a very demanding game, it doesn’t use much VRAM, generally topping out at 8GB)

The area of space in the game doesn’t cost data like that lol.

The install size is because of textures and sound files. They don’t know how to compress or optimize files.

And SSDs are ludicrously cheap now.

My first SSD was 240GB, for £300. (£1.25/GB)

I can get a 2TB one now for £64. (£0.032/GB)

And that’s just comparing the storage, nevermind one being a vastly faster NVME drive that also takes up less space, is more power efficient, and doesn’t have two annoying cables to manage.

IMO huge file sizes are more of a download speed issue than a storage issue

You don’t uNdERstAnD, a game must be less than 1GB in size or it’s unOpTiMiZeD.

But at the same time, man I’m sick of these last gen/old non raytracing cards are holding us back! Where are my rig melting next gen games?!?! Oh wait I have to download 100GB and still turn down settings to High!?!? unOpTiMiZeD!! furiously leaves bad steam review