[wtallis]

The right tradeoff for compression ratio can change with just a few years of technological progress, or even quicker if it's a half-assed port from console to a high-end PC. There are similar issues for a game's decision of how many threads to spawn based on the CPU's core count. The developer's assumptions may not have been right to begin with, and even if they were, they're not likely to stay right for long.

[dontlaugh]

Exactly. Guaranteed SSDs and a spare CPU core have made compression almost always faster.

[wtallis]

Being able to rely on fast storage makes compression less necessary for performance reasons. But the higher price/GB of SSDs mean users have a stronger preference for games to keep the install size under control.

[dontlaugh]

There was a time when console games would avoid disc seeks at all costs, even duplicating uncompressed assets. Compression can easily interfere with laying data out in blocks to read sequentially.

That’s not a problem with SSDs and most machines have more cores or even dedicated hardware decoders. Of course it’s also more worthwhile to compress since SSD storage is comparatively more expensive.