Why your games take up way more drive space than expected (even when uninstalled)

Gaming has come a long way, but with it has come a significant increase in storage requirements. The latest Tomb Raider game, Shadow of the Tomb Raider, demands 40GB of storage space, a 400-fold increase from the original Tomb Raider's 100MB requirement. Modern games often take up considerably more space than their digital store listings suggest.

When uninstalling a game, remnants of data can remain, contributing to a larger drive footprint. Beyond the base game, patches, downloadable content, and updates add to the total size. Day-one patches on consoles can be particularly problematic, consuming large amounts of space before any actual gameplay has occurred. Developers regularly release patches to fix bugs, enhance performance, and support new hardware, but these updates can quickly add up.

Additionally, developers may store language packs for all supported languages, even if the player will only use a few, further inflating the game's size. Beyond the game itself, there are other factors that contribute to the space taken up by games. Screenshots and video clips generated during gameplay can accumulate, especially on consoles where trophy videos are saved.

PC gamers also face this issue, with Windows creating shader caches and DirectX shader caches for optimal game performance. These caches are not automatically removed when uninstalling a game, leaving them as additional clutter. Mods, crash dumps, and Workshop content can also linger on the drive. Moreover, some games store their data in locations outside of the game folder itself, making it harder to remove.

Even after uninstalling, saves, settings, and other game-related files may remain in folders like Documents, My Games, or AppData. Uninstallers typically do not clean up these leftovers, which can lead to a significant waste of storage space. To manage storage effectively, it is essential to regularly check for and remove unnecessary files.

For PC users, this involves identifying games that don't support Steam Cloud, backing up save folders, and deleting unused shadercache folders and screenshots. On consoles, trophy clips saved in the Media Gallery can be reviewed and deleted as needed. While developers may not be reducing game sizes anytime soon, being proactive about managing your storage space can help prevent it from becoming a major issue in the future.