Digital Foundry confirms that Monster Hunter Wilds runs poorly due to DLC checks, but there are other scenarios.

Digital Foundry Confirms Monster Hunter Wilds Performance Issues Due to DLC Checks, But There Are Other Scenarios

The intriguing story about how the absence of purchased DLC can slow down Monster Hunter Wilds has received official confirmation. After Reddit user de_Tylmarande noticed a twofold difference in FPS between an "empty" and a "full-DLC" account, specialists from Digital Foundry conducted their own investigation.

It has been confirmed that the game performs an insane number of background requests to Steam to verify DLC ownership. If the DLC is not purchased, the game continues to aggressively "re-query" the server, creating a colossal load on the CPU.

It turned out this doesn't happen everywhere. The problem manifests only in hub locations (villages), when your character is near the Support Desk Felyne (the cat responsible for issuing rewards and the DLC menu). While an exclamation mark (notification about new or unclaimed DLC) hovers above this NPC's head, the game enters an infinite loop of checks.