And what now ? we should buy additional drives with new games ?

Sorry for the rant, it has to get out, somehow: I removed for 150 gb of games to install Stalker 2, and I have to do it _again_ for an update's temp files ?

Seriously... if I knew I'd need 380Gb to have this game install and update properly, I may have not bought it...

I would tell you two things.

First is the thing you likely don't want to hear:
Get a bigger/additional drive.
It doesn't have to be the biggest latest fastest most expensive thing you can find.
You just need more space for garbage, temp, some static storage, ...whatever garbage and stuff that doesn't need any speed, so even a cheap mechanical drive will suffice - you don't need it to run games from it, just to use it for static storage, move all kinds of crap that doesn't need the speed to this drive to make space where you need.

Second thing is also obvious, but maybe more helpful:
If the update is basically same volume as the installed game, then just delete the installed files - no reason to keep them just so they get completely overwritten anyway by the 150 GB update.

No point crying about it. I think we can safely assume that GOG is not doing this to spite anybody.
Its just how it is sometimes. Make space or get more drives, those are the ONLY two options.

As I said, _sorry for the rant_. I'm not crying, only pointing out the fact that a 136Gb _update_ is big (same issue happens on steam, I totally understand the technical reasons when there are some, etc, etc...), and the update mechanism requires the same amount of free space (instead maybe, of making patches apply in smaller chunks).

I had a long day, wanted to play, saw that there was an update. A failed one. Because of its size. That's all :)

I was thinking about reinstalling, but I also know that sometimes, the announced space requirement is a safeguard and reinstalling would have taken more time that just applying the patch (at least, it happens on steam, with requirements that are totally incoherent with actual disk usage)

And for the spare additional drive, it's a 2Tb drive. Even if it was a 15Tb drive with lot of space, requiring 380Gb for a game to have a "normal lifecycle" seems too much (in my opinion).

Anyway, I postponed the update once I saw I can still launch the game with the executable.

Have a nice weekend.

Hi!

This is much what Mzorak was saying, but I think it should be mentioned: you can always set the "Temporary game update folder" in GOG settings to another drive.
This way you don't need to install the game itself on e.g. a slower storage space, just use it as temp folder. :)
Credits for this one goes to @Delzin93, who replied this in another post on the forums.

While this is not a direct solution to the problem/issue with patches requiring a lot of storage space, it might help if you have additional drive.

Thanks for the tip, i'll do it next time :)

The patch requiring temporary space as big as the whole game for just 1/15th of what is being updated, is a limitation that comes from consoles.

STALKER 2 is a console game (there is a lot of indicators for that in-game, it starts with "press any button to continue", and goes up to the very bad menu and screen real estate, the need of scrolling, sliders instead of dropdown-menus, not being able to use number keys for stacking items, being forced to play with keyboard + mouse as if it is a gamepad etc.)

The PC version simply is a quick-and-dirty copy-paste port of the Xbox version. They didn't even bother to change the update mechanism.

There are 8 terabyte NVMe M.2 SSDs coming in January. Preorder now for €1000 (VAT included)! <cough cough>

It's absolutelly ridiculous that a patch doesn't just PATCH the diffing code... developers are getting extraordinarilly lazy nowadays.

Also the game should clearly state it needs over 350GB even if after installation it only takes half of that space.

Software development seems to be dead, killed by inneficiency.