I paid $6 for game compression before discovering Windows' hidden command-line tool
A tech journalist paid six dollars for a Steam game compression tool before discovering that Windows includes a native command-line utility for the same function. The built-in compact.exe tool uses the identical LZX compression algorithm, allowing users to free up significant storage space without third-party software. The author concludes that while the paid app offers a convenient graphical interface, the free command-line method provides equivalent functionality and control.
- ▪The author purchased a game compression tool on Steam for $6 to save space on their SSD.
- ▪Windows includes a built-in command-line tool called compact.exe that supports LZX compression.
- ▪The compact.exe tool can compress, decompress, and manage game files using specific command-line arguments.
- ▪The paid application essentially acts as a graphical user interface wrapper for the native Windows compression capabilities.
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Record
| Original publisher | XDA Developers |
| Canonical URL | https://www.xda-developers.com/paid-for-game-compression-before-discovering-windows-command-line-tool/ |
| Publication time | Sat, 12 Sep 2026 00:00:15 GMT |
| Retrieval time | 2026-09-12T00:27:23.806Z |
| Last seen | 2026-09-12T00:27:40.100Z |
| Headline source | Publisher (no WeSearch rewrite) |
| Excerpt source | publisher body |
| Excerpt method | First ~120 words (~800 chars) of extracted publisher body, fair-use limited. |
| Summary | WeSearch · cerebras-chat (WeSearch summarizer) |
| Summary source text | contentText |
| Citation coverage | Summary is a WeSearch-generated derivative; primary citation is the original publisher URL. |
| Cluster | EO7YCRmWggmI · 1 stories |
| Cluster logic | Grouped by semantic title/content similarity across sources within a rolling window. Same-publisher template collisions are excluded from coverage comparison. |
| Ranking reason | Story pages are not engagement-ranked. Hub feeds use recency, with optional source-diversified chronological ordering (cap consecutive stories per source). No personalized ranking. |
| Publisher visit | Yes — open original |
| Substitutes article? | No — link-out required for full text |
Rights status (four layers)
WeSearch handling by dimension
| Indexing | May the item be indexed (stored, ranked, made findable)? | Allowed |
| Snippet | May a short excerpt of the publisher's text be shown? | Allowed |
| AI summary | May WeSearch generate its own short summary of the article? | Limited |
| Retrieval / RAG | May the content be exposed for third-party retrieval-augmented generation? | Not asserted |
| Model training | May the content be used to train AI models? | Not asserted |
| Commercial reuse | May the content be reused commercially? | Not permitted |
Basis: Derived from the published RSS/Atom feed. Contact: [email protected]. Reviewed: 2026-07-24.
Opening excerpt (first ~120 words) tap to expand
{ "@context": "https://schema.org", "@type": "BreadcrumbList", "itemListElement": [ { "@type": "ListItem", "position": "1", "name": "Home", "item": "https://www.xda-developers.com/" }, { "@type": "ListItem", "position":"2", "name": "Windows", "item": "https://www.xda-developers.com/windows/" }, { "@type": "ListItem", "position":"3", "name": "I paid $6 for game compression before discovering Windows' hidden command-line tool", "item": "https://www.xda-developers.com/paid-for-game-compression-before-discovering-windows-command-line-tool/" } ] } I paid $6 for game compression before discovering Windows' hidden command-line tool By Hamlin Rozario Published Sep 11, 2026, 8:00 PM EDT Hamlin has been in the tech field for over nine years.
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Excerpt limited to ~120 words for fair-use compliance. The full article is at XDA Developers.
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