discussion Why no compression?

[restboi]

Hi,

I have never built own game, but was thinking of it. i have genuine question, why do so many game publishers not compress by default? i mean not lossy, but just with higher 7z preset or zip preset? is there some reasoning behind it? i often open zip and see size of game is same as zip. is this some marketting tactic? to show the game actually has stuff in it. i do not know much about game dev so it is why i ask here. is there some pitfall waiting for me if i want to make game and compress?

 

[Rimuru12]

Compressing a game is complicated. some people just dont want to risk losing data through compression. many newer game devs also dont think about compressing files and just view zip as a convenient way to sent files

 

[misterfluffums]

The size of games is mainly due to images and movies, which are hard to compress with a generic algorithm like zip. Have you tried repacking the zips to see how much space you can save? It'll disappoint you.

Why the images geney aren't compressed is the desire to deliver as high quality as possible overriding rationality. I only started to lossy compress the images when I found I really couldn't tell the difference with png.

Of course I saved the original assets without compression somewhere just in case I ever decide to up the resolution of my game or something.