I decided to download the current Cyberpunk 1.62 game installer file backup to have a locally preserved copy of the game in its current form in advance of the upcoming mega patch they are planning to release in the near future for the game, which will enormously change the game in virtually every way, based on interviews with Pawel Sasko and other CDPR devs and other information they've recently made public.

Here's the thing... The (presumably LZMA) compressed archive from GOG is 108GB in size, while the installed uncompressed version of Cyberpunk is only 70GB in size. That's quite the anomaly. Why such a huge difference in size? I dunno if GOG Galaxy installer is embedded in there as well or not, but if it is, I'm sure it is not 38+GB in size that's for sure.

So why is the archive so large? I compressed the installed copy of the game with 7-zip LZMA and it came to 60GB of size. Subtracting that from the 108GB of the installer EXE yields a 48GB compressed data discrepancy, which means that the EXE installer is around 80% larger than the compressed game itself. 80% is a LOT.

I highly doubt this is some kind of odd mistake on their part. How can you accidentally end up with 108GB for a game that compressed is only 60GB and not notice? Highly unlikely IMHO.

Therefore, I speculate that the GOG Cyberpunk EXE installer already contains either the upcoming Cyberpunk mega patch and any new content it brings, and/or it contains Phantom LIberty's game data already. It probably contains both, but whichever it contains which is not getting installed works out to approximately 50-53GB using figures I computed above.

Whether this data is the upcoming game patch, Phantom Liberty, or both, that is absolutely MASSIVE and greatly unexpected, at least for me. I was expecting PL to clock in somewhere between 30-40% the size of the base game based on things CDPR has said in the past while also being conservative and not over-expecting things. And to be honest, if it does turn out to be this size I will be happy enough about it. But if it is 70-80% new content than the base game as I am speculating here based on my math above, that is like super wow!

I did not try to decompress the InnoSetup EXE file or datamine the archive personally yet, so this is all pure speculation but it is the most reasonable explanation that I can think of at least. Even if it is what I think it is, it is also possible it could contain huge debug info files that can be honking large too, and would not be a part of the final builds of the new game patch or PL.

I never google searched to see if anyone else noticed this or datamined the game already but I would not be surprised if someone has. Anyhow, I thought I would share my findings and speculations to see what others think or know about it (in case someone has datamined it for example).

Looking forward to the upcoming patch and expansion.

The difference might be from the audio language packs. Afaik they are not all installed when you install the game, only the language you select.

The reason it's so huge is because GOG has become so lazy that they just bundle all language packs into one generic installer. They've done the same thing with the new version of the Witcher 3, along with other games.

So it's not even speculation to expect Phantom Liberty will be huge, it will be huge, because you're going to have to waste a ton of HDD space on audio data you don't want/need, again, because GOG do not care about the QOL of customers who are not using Galaxy.

Things would be so much easier and GOG installers smaller, if we all used esperanto.

Commo estas ustas duo pulatos? (That is Geralt asking the enemy "Do you want to die or what, f*cker?" in esperanto.)

Ah, dang. I had not thought of that but you are probably right with all the supported languages. And here I was hoping I would spark someone to data mine the archive. LOL

GOG's content delivery system (also used to package offline installers in addition to Galaxy deployments) is not that human readable. I mean it is, as in you can see the file names, size, checksums and all that, but the overall process of what applies where is clearly not meant to be interpreted by a pair of eyes.

As to why they don't switch to something more efficient and speedy, such as zstd, I have no idea. The way they are currently packing their installers certainly leaves a lot of room for improvement.

Update: Ok, I found a video on YouTube that shows official information from CDPR that Phantom Liberty is 70GB on its own, so I imagine the game might get a bit larger with the new patch and then 70GB more with PL. So I was way off base but it was a reasonable speculation at least, and a bit of fun. :)

If it's that large, that is insane unexpected that they put that much work into it. It sounds like it might double the gameplay, however they were careful to not give "number of hours of play" due to major changes in the game and expansion that make it difficult to predict based on different playstyles and new content etc. which is totally fair. In fact, that's good as it suggests more replay value for those who crave.

Pidän paljon enemmän siitä, että pääni pysyy kiinni olkapäissäni.