14 DAY TRIAL // Star Citizen is shaping up to be a massive game, but apparently only the client for the actual game needs about 100GB of free space, while patches can be anywhere from 14 to 20GB, meaning fans with slow download speeds or limits on their monthly data transfer are in for a very tough time.
Star Citizen captured the hearts, minds, and wallets of millions of fans from all over the world, as the space game, which promised to bring back experiences like those seen in Freelancer many years ago, has earned millions of dollars/euros in funding from users.
The size of Star Citizen dwarfs current games
The game is still in development and won't go live until 2016, according to developer Cloud Imperium Games, but it seems that one unforeseen aspect might prevent people from experiencing the space simulator: actual size.
Responding to speculation from a fan concerning the final game's size, CIG Director of Game Operations, Jeremy Masker, confirms on the forums that the final game could be massive in size.
According to initial estimates, even with compression and the removal of non-essential assets, the initial client for Star Citizen might reach around 100GB. Even with optimization, patches will also be massive in scope, reaching anywhere from 14 to 20GB, as they'll come with a lot of big assets depending on the changes.
"The size and number of assets that are left to deliver means that our client size is much more likely to be 100GB. Also, yes we are optimizing game patching for speed and to only deliver diffs, but this is unlikely to reduce actual patch size. Again, each patch has 100s of assets, each of these assets are at times 200MB, this leads to 2-6GB patches, and if we end up doing a file type re-factor and have to re-download 30-40% of the assets on the hard-drive, then the patch will be 14-20GB."
As such, if you want to enjoy Star Citizen, a fast internet connection with unlimited data transfer is, more or less, mandatory. If you don't have these things, then you might not have such a great time.
