But never forget: For three weeks in November 2014, a mountain in Nepal was guarded by the most terrifying enemy of all: Have you played Far Cry 4 recently? Did you experience the original lock back in 2014? Let me know in the comments below.
If you were a PC gamer in late 2014, you remember the chaos. You installed Far Cry 4 , booted it up, and immediately felt something was wrong . The mouse movement was sluggish. The camera panning felt heavy. You pulled up your FPS counter, expecting to see a smooth 60+ (your shiny new GTX 970 could handle it), only to see the needle glued to .
They were wrong. The internet erupted. Reddit threads, Steam forums, and NeoGAF posts exploded with rage. Gamers weren't just annoyed; they were physically ill. For many, 30 FPS with a mouse and keyboard causes motion sickness due to the increased latency and choppy panning.
The logic was likely: "Most PC gamers have 60Hz monitors. We'll lock the framerate to half of that (30) to prevent screen tearing and ensure stable physics."
A user known as on the Guru3D forums released a simple DLL injection tool. This tool tricked the game into thinking your monitor was running at 30Hz or 60Hz depending on what you needed, effectively unlocking the framerate.
Is it a reason to skip the game today? Absolutely not. Far Cry 4 remains one of the best games in the series. The villain is iconic, the setting is breathtaking, and now—thanks to patches and mods—it runs like butter.
However, instead of decoupling the simulation rate from the render rate (a standard practice for PC ports), Ubisoft hard-coded the game’s internal clock to the refresh rate. This is a classic "lazy port" symptom. It saved development time on console-specific optimizations but created a nightmare for PC players with high-refresh-rate monitors.
When Far Cry 4 launched in November 2014, it was a gorgeous mess. Gamers were treated to the vibrant, vertically chaotic open world of Kyrat, complete with elephants, grappling hooks, and the unforgettable villain Pagan Min. However, for a significant portion of the PC gaming community, the launch wasn't defined by the scenery or the story. It was defined by a single, frustrating number: .
Ubisoft eventually released official patches (Title Update 1.5.0 and later 1.6.0) that officially unlocked the framerate and fixed the high-refresh-rate speed bug. But for a month after launch, the community fix was the only way to play. Good news: If you buy Far Cry 4 on Steam, Uplay, or Epic Games Store right now, the 30 FPS lock is gone. Ubisoft fixed it officially years ago.
Was it an unforgivable sin? At the time, yes. It broke trust. It showed that Ubisoft prioritized console launch windows over PC quality assurance.
