Well if you were hoping for an explanation, you’ve got one. Ubisoft has since released an official statement on the matter via the Watch Dogs’ website. “The PC version does indeed contain some old, unused render settings that were deactivated for a variety of reasons, including possible impacts on visual fidelity, stability, performance and overall gameplay quality.”
Ubisoft claims that they were not “downgrading” the quality of the game, but rather they were striving to optimize the game for the best possible quality, which we guess sometimes means lowering the quality of graphics. After all, why play a game at max settings when your framerates are struggling at 10fps, right?
The developer went on to acknowledge the mod in question, but also warned that it could have negative consequences on the game. “Those could range from performance issues, to difficulty in reading the environment in order to appreciate the gameplay, to potentially making the game less enjoyable or even unstable.” Perhaps it will, perhaps it won’t, but if you do start to run into problems, perhaps you might want to consider disabling it.
So, what do you guys think? Is this a good enough explanation?