Genshin Impact updates will need less disc space for downloading soon
HoYoverse has been rolling out a steady series of quality-of-life updates for Genshin Impact over the past couple of months, streamlining the experience for players of the open-world RPG. In the near future, another major change will be made that should influence everyone’s experience with the PC version of the game in a positive way, though it’s not one that you’ll notice when you’re actually playing – no, this technical improvement will make things better before you even log in.
The Shanghai-based developer is currently testing a launcher update that will massively reduce the amount of storage space that needs to be reserved for downloading patches of the game – if you’re having trouble freeing up enough space every six weeks to accommodate the new version of the popular title, then this patch is going to offer a major improvement for you.
At the moment, downloading and installing a Genshin Impact update requires around double the amount of free space than the downloaded file’s actual size for decompression. This change, which is currently being tested with a limited number of users, doesn’t completely eliminate the need for a bit of overflow space, but it significantly reduces it to the point where you won’t longer have to worry about uninstalling other games just to make room for the newest Genshin Impact version – at least if you’re not planning things incredibly tight.
As you can see from the screenshot above, I was not selected for the test – the pre-load for the update is 5.28GB, but the required space is 11.04GB.
Keep in mind that this change hasn’t been rolled out to everyone just yet, so if you didn’t fall into the group of randomly selected testers, you’ll still need to do some space management for the upcoming release of update 4.5 with Chiori. We can only hope that it’ll be available for everyone once Arlecchino comes to town in update 4.6.
If you’re playing on iOS, Android, PS4, or PS5, then this change to the launcher won’t affect you in any way.