Why PC game downloads are so damned big

Back when 48KB of RAM was a huge deal, or when a 450MHz processor was the norm, or when 10MB of storage space was more than anyone expected to fill in a lifetime. Nowadays I have multiple terabytes of storage capacity...and it just keeps filling up. One of 2016's large-scale PC gaming trends--emphasis on large--was the rapid inflation of download sizes and drive footprints. Let's dig into why before examining some potential solutions. This 10TB drive is truly vast and stupendously fast (for a hard drive), and is also miserly on the power consumption.