I'm not remotely surprised that more Indie developers are pushing back against DLSS 5 and Nvidia's gen AI graphics card tools. However, New Blood, a publisher with a focus on retro-style games, is urging devs to push back on the tech while comparing the situation to the rise (and fall) of NFTs and crypto, all while providing player insights that I wholeheartedly agree with.
In a conversation with PC Gamer, New Blood's CEO Dave Oshry and David Szymanski, the developer behind Dusk, Gloomwood, and Iron Lung, delve into their concerns with DLSS 5. The full, unedited comments have since been shared via Bluesky, but I feel like kicking things off with "first of all, who asked for this?!" really sets the stage.
"This isn't even DLSS! Please tell me what generative AI has to do with Deep Learning Super Sampling," Oshry exclaims before suggesting that using phrase "Nvidia Generative Upscaling" would result in instant backlash. At the same time, the CEO says that even if the tech does use DLSS 5 branding, "we all have working eyes and can see exactly what we think it is."
Oshry admits the more effective way to tackle DLSS 5 besides calling Nvidia out is "voting with our wallets" and "stop collaborating with them as developers." The Indie boss believes this might prompt the GPU maker to "go back to giving us what we want," before rhyming off a wishlist of more power and GPUs that should be "getting cheaper with every innovation, not somehow more expensive while we get less value."
These are pretty common concerns in the GPU scene right now, and when it comes to graphics card pricing, external forces have affected costs in the past. The CEO isn't shy when it comes to drawing comparisons, stating developers and players need to push back "just like we did with NFTs and crypto games and try in vain to do with predatory microtransactions, loot boxes, and battle passes."
These are naturally strong comments, but Oshry undertsands the separation between DLSS 5 and previous iterations. While they get a quick jab in at historic failed technologies like Nvidia 3DVision and the shield, he also admits that while elements like RTX and Path Tracing are expensive, "I'll be damned if they don't make Cyberpunk 2077 look good." The "jury is still out" on Frame Generation, though.
One element PC players might not consider is how much it'll cost developers to actually even use DLSS 5. Oshry jokes about how it sounds like you'll inject your games with realistic graphics for free, when really "it'll cost something like $5,000." Even if it didn't require premium GPUs like the RTX 5090, though, the CEO sarcastically asks the question, "At this rate, why make game art at all? Why not just draw some shapes and colours and let AI generate what it thinks it should look like?"
Developer David Szymanski confirms that he agrees with the New Blood CEO while criticizing the idea of DLSS 5 being optional:
"Optional like realtime GI? Optional, like any number of "optional" features that anyone who has played an AA game in the past half decade can tell you aren't really optional, because games are now built to lean on those technologies." Explains Szymanski. The dev also points out that while embracing features like DLSS and raytracing is starting to pay off, "It's been at an immense cost to the clarity, accessibility, and playability of the games that use them for years."
Szymanski's concerns largely tie back to the idea of players getting features they don't really need when the industry is crying out for "games that run at a consistent framerate and sharp resolution, with consistent lighting and art design, on hardware that doesn't require us to remortage out house, using technology that doesn't necessitate turning the world into a Mad Max wasteland." I couldn't have put it better myself.
As amusing as the above plea and Szymanski's comments about how "nobody wants their games to look like Italian brainrot" sound, the core point rings tremendously true. I've had the displeasure of working within the GPU scene during a time where decent midrange performance is locked behind what we used to call premium, and access to good, playable native performance is being swapped out for AI features that are drifting further away from an ordinary gaming experience.
The current PC gaming tech trajectory is pretty unclear, but from where I'm standing as a hardware reviewer, we're charging towards a future where simply running games on a console or rig will be a thing of the past. Between Nvidia pushing for a generative AI future where a model dreams up graphics, and even the idea of streaming everything from the cloud lingering in the shadows, it's easy to see why publishers like New Blood are urging everyone to push back in an attempt to course-correct.
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