Monster Hunter Wilds fans are asking Capcom for answers after one player seemed to discover that PC performance is dictated by the number of DLCs a user has.
de_Tylmarande puts their theory plainly: “More DLC = more FPS.” The tech-savvy Reddit user uncovered what they believe is a “bug in the code they need to fix” and shared their findings with the Monster Hunter subreddit yesterday. If their theory is accurate, it would mean an undisclosed number of Monster Hunter Wilds PC players have experienced sluggish performance — potentially since its February 2025 launch — simply due to their lack of DLC ownership.
The Reddit user says they first began digging into Monser Hunter Wilds after they, and many others, noticed “constant FPS drops where they should not exist at all.” They claim to have previously discovered optimization issues with 2024’s Dragon’s Dogma 2 and believed they may be able to help smooth performance for another Capcom game, but what they think they’ve discovered is strange, to say the least.
As de_Tylmarande explains in their post, what began to lead them on the correct trail was noticing how performance fluctuated when playing through a friend’s Steam account vs. their own. Playing on the former presented little issue, while playing through the latter resulted in performance “on the floor.”
“I relog back into my friend account — and everything is fine,” de_Tylmarande explains. “Nonsense. Shock. I refused to believe what I was seeing.”
They checked to see if the problem lay in differences in texture quality, settings, character look, name, weapon, and more on the two accounts but still found that, on one device, Monster Hunter Wilds performed very differently between the two profiles. Then it hit them: their friend owned all DLC, and they owned nothing.
The conclusion? The more DLC a player owns, the better Monster Hunter Wilds runs.
“Why? Because Capcom focused so hard on microtransactions that they implemented an insanely crooked and aggressive DLC ownership check function,” de_Tylmarande adds. “And no, it is not about protection or anticheat or whatever – it is just a DLC presence check.”
The idea behind their investigation is that Monster Hunter Wilds is rigorously checking to see if a user owns DLC. The more DLC in their possession, the less checking that needs to be done, resulting in increased framerates for those who shelled out extra cash for things like cosmetics, gestures, and decorations. de_Tylmarande doesn’t believe Capcom is intentionally attacking players on the backend for not having DLC, saying they’ve already reached out to Capcom support in hopes they’ll implement a fix sooner rather than later.
IGN has reached out to Capcom for comment.
In the meantime, they’ve created a personal mod to essentially bypass the DLC check. It doesn’t unlock any add-on content, but does make Monster Hunter Wilds believe that they own it. With any settings and in balance mode, the result, they say, is “performance went through the roof.”
“Anticipating some concerns, I also want to publicly state this upfront: if Capcom don’t fix this mess, I’ll finish the ‘mod’ — but it will be released strictly as open source (!!!), and it won’t be distributed in a closed (binary), let alone encrypted form,” de_Tylmarande adds. “And again, that’s only a last-resort option if Capcom end up ignoring the issue.”
The game’s community is already looking for answers, with recent posts from the publisher filled with replies from users hoping a fix soon arrives. de_Tylmarande, meanwhile, has uploaded a video showcasing the difference between the two different versions of the experience.
care to address this? https://t.co/1C85a0oJZJ
— Ramez @ Monster Hunter Wilds #MHWilds (@Ramez05) January 15, 2026
Capcom has yet to comment on how DLC could impact Monster Hunter Wilds FPS drops on PC. The Mega Man and Resident Evil publisher does have two patches set to arrive through the next few weeks. However, these are pre-scheduled updates and may not combat what de_Tylmarande calls “very poor optimization.”
The first update, which has a January 27 release date, is patch Ver.1.040.03.01, and is at least promised to come with “optimization improvements for Steam-specific processes and options to reduce processing load.”
“To further improve stability and performance across all platforms, additional improvements will be implemented in the Ver. 1.041 update in February 18,” a statement from Capcom says. “We would like to thank everyone who has reported issues and shared feedback. We appreciate your continued support for Monster Hunter Wilds.”
Monster Hunter Wilds launched for PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X | S February 28, 2025. Its most recent update, Title Update 4, released December 16, addressing other PC- and console-related issues. A roadmap published earlier that month outlined Capcom’s plans to keep the game running smoothly through to spring.
Michael Cripe is a freelance writer with IGN. He’s best known for his work at sites like The Pitch, The Escapist, and OnlySP. Be sure to give him a follow on Bluesky (@mikecripe.bsky.social) and Twitter (@MikeCripe).
