@Dinoshi 64 Yeah...

There are some developers that still somewhat optimise their games but the way that games usually are means that there isn't much time to do that. A majority of retail games now are unfinished even with a Day 1 patch (some physical copies of games can be as bad as a coaster or still at the Alpha stage). What was a rarity e.g. F1 98 on the PS1 or Spyro: Enter the Dragonfly is now REALLY common... For the likes of live service games, yeah that's more of the not bothered side due to the updates and any optimising is down to stuff like frame rates or better frame pacing.

Also doesn't help that games these days are targeting 4K or even 8K and the size of those assets adds up even if you don't/can't play a game at 4K. 4K video takes up more space than in 1080p. Plus the increase of language support, both in text and in voice. Back in the day, you might have just English, Japanese or English/French/German/Spanish/Italian that might drop some of those languages depending on game or where you buy it, the likes of EA also offered Scandinavian languages as text. Now by default at least for the major companies, it's English/French/German/Spanish/Italian/Brazilian Portuguese/Polish/Dutch/Japanese/Chinese/Korean minimum. All of that increases HDD space and not every game offers optional language support to save space (again mainly down to live service games and physical copies).

@Alefy San
Tbh I think that shows how screwed game development is as of late, it feels as though devs don't think/care about optimizing their games anymore and somehow expect everyone to buy expensive hard drives just to even download a few games

We've came a long way when it comes to game consoles. This simple game icon has a filesize bigger than the entirety of many SNES games!