I finally have more storage for PC games on my gaming laptop, and all it took was buying a $6 / £5 Steam app that compresses files down to a minimum.
Look, it's no secret that PC games these days take up a lot of space, and if you're anything like me, you'll like having a big enough SSD to download as many as possible. But that gets tricky when titles like The Last of Us Part II Remastered is 150GB, Monster Hunter Wilds at 75GB and South of Midnight for another 70GB.
Then there are games that I'm always dipping in and out of as well, like Cyberpunk 2077 with The Phantom Liberty (that's around 100GB) and Marvel Rivals (another 70GB). Plus, early-access titles like Hades 2 and Selaco add a few more gigabytes, and I'm in no mind to reinstall these games every time they get a major update.
As I'm sure many PC gamers can attest, there's a certain joy in booting up a title that's the flavor of the moment without having to wait eons for it to download. But there's only so much an SSD can handle before it says, "nope, I'm full." Hence, the sacrifice of picking and choosing games that get the axe.
Hold that axe, though, as CompressorX can give your SSD some ample room without actually deleting titles — it just makes them manageably smaller.
It's an AI-powered file compression tool available on Steam, and while it can compress large files and apps, I find it's best used for those huge PC games that can otherwise take up substantial, precious disk space.
More games, even more space
With my 2TB gaming laptop, I have enough room to download many a PC title. But I've recently had to do some spring cleaning as I was getting a tad selfish, and a full hard drive can result in slower PC speeds.
When I came across CompressorX, which came out around a year ago, it was just the tool I didn't know I wanted. It's made to deliver "lossless, transparent data compression" for files, and integrates seamlessly with a Windows File System.
With its simple user interface and automatic detection of PC games on your system, it's incredibly easy to use, too. Select a game or app, press compress and your PC's inner storage wars will be no more.
There are four ways to compress files, depending on the compression speeds you're up for and how much space you want to save:
- Fastest — Compresses apps quickly, but files may not shrink as much
- Balanced — Mixing speed and space saving. Save more space but takes longer
- Slow — Takes more time but shrinks apps to an even smaller size
- Slowest — Saves the most space but takes the longest.
Personally, I always used the "Slowest" option as I wanted the compression tool to squash down game files to as small as possible. While larger files, such as Cyberpunk 2077, took the longest time (around 20 minutes), I didn't mind the length of time it took.
I was impressed with many of the games CompressorX, well, compressed. For example, South of Midnight's huge 82GB storage shrank to 64GB, saving me a good 18GB, while Black Mesa (a classic I always refrain from deleting) went from 28GB down to 15GB.
There are some sweet savings to be made, but not all games I tried get the same treatment. Cyberpunk 2077 went from 84GB to a compressed size of 82GB, and for Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance? 24.62GB to 24.25GB. Not exactly game-changing space savers, and it may be specific titles that the AI compression model has trouble dealing with.
But hey, I'll take any bit of room I can get, and for the most part, CompressorX helped me clear out a lot of storage. Out of the just-over 500GB of games I currently have stored (yes, it was bigger than that before more spring cleaning), I saved 100GB. So, that's around 20% storage savings, and that only gets better with the more games I have downloaded.
Initially, I was worried it just meant that files would be compressed and I would have to decompress them every time I booted up a game. But I was actually able to get a game going without a hitch; each game I compressed was fully accessible.
Sure, many of the best external SSDs and hard drives will get you extra space plenty of extra space, ranging anywhere from 1TB to 18TB and beyond, but as a quick way to fully utilize the storage you currently have on your PC, CompressorX offers up a storage-saving solution.
Final thoughts
CompressorX isn't perfect, as there are some features like its "Set it and forget it" tool that allows you to select folders and have files automatically compress when they come in that I'm unsure how to use properly. And some games can take a good 10 minutes to compress only to shave off a gigabyte or less.
Still, CompressorX has been an incredibly handy utility tool for me to keep my PC game library storage to a minimum, and it means I don't have to keep on deleting titles just to make room for more gargantuan-sized games. As yes, I have my eyes already set on the 100GB Doom: The Dark Ages.
Steam is packed with helpful tools, like Lossless Scaling that can triple frame rates or Wallpaper Engine for stunning, live wallpapers, but if you're after a way to minimize that backlog of PC games you refuse to delete, you'll want to check out CompressorX.
