We’ve heard of pay-to-win, but now Capcom seems to be (hopefully unintentionally) offering pay-for-performance in Monster Hunter Wilds. According to recent benchmarks, MH Wilds actually runs better if you own all the DLCs. The game is notorious for its slew of performance issues on PC, but has slowly been regaining stability through various patches and major Title Updates.

A GPU/CPU optimization patch landed in December last year, with two more scheduled for January and February 2026. The former has now been announced for January 27 and is to add new graphics and CPU settings, and critically, offers “VRAM Usage Improvements”. However, there has been no official reference to the recently discovered DLC performance bug so far.

Monster Hunter Wilds PC patch is confirmed for January 27

Following the bizarre DLC bug discovered yesterday, Capcom has confirmed the Steam-exclusive patch coming this month. Patch version 1.040.03.01 will be available on January 27 at 6 PM Pacific Time. The details of this patch were already outlined back in December, which you can find here.

DLC check affects performance?

News of the DLC-related bug has exploded online, and it comes thanks to testing from Redditor u/de_Tylmarande. In short, they ran benchmark tests using the same hardware and same settings on two different accounts – one with all the DLC and the other a clean install of the base game with no DLC.

To their surprise, the game runs noticeably better if you have all the DLC installed, reportedly up to 100 FPS more. They theorize that this strange bug has something to do with the ‘DLC presence check’, a function to check the ownership of the game’s DLC.

With how quickly this news has spread online, we wouldn’t be surprised to hear that Capcom has taken notice. Whether it’s a simple fix or not, we don’t know, but it’s an interesting optimization for the developer team to consider as soon as possible.

About the Author

Jack Goodall

At PC Guide, Jack is mostly responsible for reporting on hardware deals. He also specializes in monitors, TVs, and headsets and can be found putting his findings together in a review or best-of guide.