According to Vivendi's FEAR community manager, people who are having performance issues with the retail version of FEAR, are all pirates! In this community thread Greg raised quite a ruckus when people who pre-ordered Monolith's FPS F.E.A.R. (First Encounter Assault Recon) complained of stuttering and performance issues, by calling them pirates. While apparently FEAR apparently has been warezed, people claim certain online outlets have shipped the game ahead of tomorrow's official release date. While pirates usually only remove protections, it is very questionable how such impacts performance at all.

UPDATE: Vivendi's FEAR community manager has issued an apology stating that he did not mean to generalize the issue.