Three studios removed DLSS support after receiving AMD sponsorship

In DF Direct Weekly #118, Linneman gave his opinion on the controversy, saying that he thinks that AMD's deal with Bethesda is one of the bigger partnerships. He thinks that the AMD would not necessarily want to have competing technologies present in the game because of the sponsorship deal.

However, Linneman reiterated on X that the tweet was not related to Starfield. "This is pure speculation. Any comment made was unrelated to Starfield. I mentioned OTHER non-Starfield games. I have zero insight into this game."

There was early speculation that Starfield would not be supporting DLSS at launch. AMD confirmed that FSR will be in the new Bethesda space RPG and implied that Nvidia's upscaling tech will not be available at launch. However, the company clarified that its partnership with Bethesda does not prohibit the studio from adding support for DLSS.

"If they want to do DLSS, they have AMD's full support," AMD Chief Architect of Gaming Solutions Frank Azor said. He further adds that the partnership only requires studios to prioritize FSR. "When we do bundles, we ask them: 'Are you willing to prioritize FSR?' If they ask us for DLSS support, we always tell them yes," Azor revealed.

Starfield now has DLSS support thanks to modders who have taken up the challenge of adding Nvidia's tech to the game. The DLSS mod is one of the most popular add-ons found on Nexus Mods which is understandable as a majority of gaming computers use Nvidia GPUs.

We have tested the mods and found that while it does not improve framerates, it does smoothen out some graphical issues. However, the downside is that the mod isn't perfect and does misbehave sometimes during extended gameplay.

Whether or not we'll see more exclusivity maneuvering in the upscaling tech world as the GPU wars rage on is anyone's guess - but we're fairly certain it isn't the consumers who will be benefitting at the end of it all.