2B, times 183, plus G.



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Last Friday, the very good RPG Nier: Automata underwent what the scientific community calls 'puffer-fishification'. That is to say, it suddenly and inexplicably ballooned to over 700% of its original download size, as an update magically transformed the game from a reedy 50 GB lightweight into a 366-GB behemoth.

But it has since hit the Ozempic and is now back down to its regular size. "We have identified the cause and now resolved this issue," tweeted the official Nier X account earlier today. "Apologies for any inconvenience caused."

Notably absent from the bugfix notice was any explanation as to just what had happened. It might be academic at this point, but I for one would love to know how you accidentally make a game seven times bigger without anything changing.

Squenix is keeping schtum, but Rick Lane suggested, in our article last week about the bug, that it might have been related to Nier: Automata's DLC packages. "When selected for download on Steam, each DLC appears to have the same file size as the base game", he noted. "Weirdly though, this is only true for the initial download and installation. Once the game is installed, the file reportedly reverts to a more appropriate size of roughly 50 gigs." Indeed, the suggested temporary workaround for the issue (before Square Enix fixed it) was to uncheck all the DLCs when you installed the game.



So it sure seems like, somehow, the base files for the entire original game got attached to each individual DLC package. That might also explain why the size increase only applied to the downloads and not its install size—the whole game got downloaded eight times, but it was simply overwriting the base game files over and over.

That's just my speculation though, and without more news from Squenix, that's all we're gonna get. For now, enjoy being able to once again download 2B and 9S' adventures without having to start the download two weeks in advance.

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One of Josh's first memories is of playing Quake 2 on the family computer when he was much too young to be doing that, and he's been irreparably game-brained ever since. His writing has been featured in Vice, Fanbyte, and the Financial Times. He'll play pretty much anything, and has written far too much on everything from visual novels to Assassin's Creed. His most profound loves are for CRPGs, immersive sims, and any game whose ambition outstrips its budget. He thinks you're all far too mean about Deus Ex: Invisible War.

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