Capcom is in a strange bind with their big blockbuster release for 2025, Monster Hunter Wilds.
As we reported before the weekend started, their game breached the 1 million concurrent player count on Steam. Over the weekend, it reached a player peak of 1,384,608 concurrent players.
Unfortunately, that’s not what everyone has really been talking about over the weekend. As reported by PC Gamer, multiple launch issues with the game led to it reaching a mixed critical reception on Steam.
Most of the issues relate to game crashes, optimization, and bugs. There are some Steam users who pointed out that Monster Hunter Wilds has a poor performance-to-graphics ratio, with one player pointing out their PC is better able to run Kingdom Come Deliverance.
We also need to point out that Monster Hunter Wilds reached high MetaCritic scores, when reviewers did not know that the final game was going to make part of the character creator into paid DLC.
For their part, Capcom has been communicating with players diligently since these issues emerged. As reported by Video Games Chronicle, the official Monster Hunter Status Twitter account told players to update their graphics drivers and turn off compatibility mode, and then readjust settings accordingly.
Since then, they reported that the latest patch is live:
“Hot fix patch Ver.1.000.03.00 is now live on PC/Steam, addressing the issue with the Smithy.
Please make sure to restart the game and update to the latest version before your next play session.
This patch for PS5 and Xbox Series X|S is already live.”
They also linked to this description of the issue that they fixed:
“Hunters, we are currently investigating an issue that can occur when visiting the Smithy.
When this issue occurs, weapon upgrading tutorials are repeatedly shown, disabling certain options in the menu.”
These early performance issues may not necessarily invalidate the reviews that led to Monster Hunter Wilds’ high MetaCritic score. A lot of those reviews refer to other aspects of the game, particularly the continuing refinement of its game design.
This highlights the double bind of video game reviews of online games, as this isn’t the first time that the game that got reviewed doesn’t match what gamers actually paid for. Subsequently, it’s arguably more honest for reviewers to wait for launch, but many reviewers insist that they should get to make their reviews well in advance.
Because of this double bind, it isn’t possible most of the time for reviewers to be able to inform players about online games before they launch. But now, it’s on Capcom to get these fixes pushed out in a timely manner before players feel they didn’t earn those high metascores after all.
