It's been nearly a year since the release of Monster Hunter Wilds, the latest mainline entry in the Monster Hunter series. While it went on to sell over 10 million copies, the game ended up being my biggest disappointment of the year for it's non-existant difficulty, unfinished endgame content, and needlessly convoluted multiplayer system.
Not to mention its performance on PC has been absolutely abysmal to the point players have been relentlessly review-bombing it on Steam. While Capcom has been busy improving its endgame content with post-launch updates that added challenging new monsters, new gear to grind for, and an insane crossover with Final Fantasy XIV, there have been little to no improvements for the game's performance on PC.
However, Reddit user by the name of u/de_Tylmarande has reportedly discovered one of the main causes for Monster Hunter Wilds' subpar PC performance, especially for people using mid-range PC hardware.
MH Wilds - Bad performance mystery (Solved?) from r/MonsterHunter
According to u/de_Tylmarande, the performance issues are partly caused by a system Monster Hunter Wilds uses to check how much DLC content a player owns. They discovered this after doing testing using two separate Steam accounts, where one had no DLC and the other did.
This DLC ownership checking system was running constantly in the background, and they concluded from their testing that the more DLC that was registered to a player's account, the fewer performance hiccups there were.
de_Tylmarande then decided to take it a step further by using a mod that disabled the DLC ownership checking system and was shocked to discover that disabling the system resulted in a 75% performance increase (26 fps with the mod off and 46 fps with the mod on while running in the Windward Plains hub area).
Considering Monster Hunter Wilds has tons of piecemeal DLC items like cosmetic armor sets, Seikret and weapon skins, stickers, emotes, and various other knick-knacks, it would make sense that the DLC ownership checker would cause performance issues.
It essentially forces your PC's CPU to overclock, trying to track if any of them are on your Steam account, and causing Monster Hunter Wilds' framerate to suffer as a result.
Now, it's highly likely this is a bug caused by accident. Yet, it's wild that in nearly a year of releasing post-launches, Capcom didn't catch such a huge game-breaking bug in testing that a random fan on Reddit managed to do in their spare time.
However, there is a chance that Capcom may address this in the coming weeks, as they've announced on their Japanese X account that a performance patch for the Steam version will be rolled out on January 28, 2026.
【お知らせ】下記日時よりSteam®版専用パッチ「Ver.1.040.03.01」の配信を予定しております。 Steam®版のみ2026/01/28(水) 11:00※本パッチの配信時には、プレイ途中にオンラインから切断されることはございません。 本パッチでは、Steam版固有の処理の最適化に加えて、… pic.twitter.com/ICnab1i63zJanuary 15, 2026
Although there is also a possibility that Capcom's upcoming patch won't fix the issue regarding the DLC ownership checker, causing frame drops at all.
If that happens, u/de_Tylmarande says he'll finish the mod that disables the DLC ownership checker and release it as open source as a last resort option.
But will either option be enough to fix Monster Hunter Wilds on PC and bring back disenfranchised PC players? We'll keep an eye out to let you know if performance improves on PC officially or unofficially.
Do you think Monster Hunter Wilds PC performance will finally get fixed in Capcom's upcoming patch on January 28, 2026, or will you wait for unofficial mods to do the job?
If you have any thoughts on the matter, let us know in the comments below.
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