While we wait for official word from either AMD or Bethesda on whether Starfield is going to be open to benefiting from DLSS support, professional modder, PureDark, has seemingly announced their intention to get it into the game before it’s even fully released.
With AMD announcing its partnership with Bethesda for Starfield there has been quite the reaction from the gaming community over a perceived block on the developers adding in DLSS support for Nvidia users. The suggestion is that part of the partnership requires the exclusive use of AMD’s own FidelityFX Super Resolution (FSR), blocking the likes of DLSS and Intel’s XeSS from being added to partner games.
This is something AMD has avoided questioning about—and most recently when we’ve specifically asked for comment in the last day—so we still don’t know whether that’s definitely a thing or not. For its part Nvidia has recommended we ask the devs about DLSS, and we’re still awaiting a response from Bethesda.
PureDark, however, has come out and explicitly stated that they’ll have at least DLSS 3 support added during the pre-purchase reward early access period.
“Don’t you worry, you’ve got me,” they say, “I’ll manage to get at least DLSS3 support in the Early Access 5 days, then slowly adding in an independent DLSS2 implementation depending on the situation (just like what I did with Jedi Survivor).”
You might remember PureDark from the various mods they’ve created for Skyrim, Elden Ring, The Last of Us, and Fallout 4, but it’s arguably the Jedi: Survivor DLSS mod that garnered the most attention. By jamming DLSS 3 and Frame Generation support where it wasn’t wanted, PureDark was able to hugely increase performance for anyone with supporting GPUs.
PureDark (Modder) on the Starfield situation from r/nvidia
It started off a little flaky, as you can see from the initial videos on their YouTube channel, but it’s improved over time. PureDark’s mods are mostly behind a Patreon paywall, though given the work they’ve put in they deserve some sort of compensation for it.
Their work has been at least noted and appreciated by Nvidia, however. In recent briefings around the RTX 4060 and RTX 4060 Ti launches, Nvidia has highlighted the way modders are dropping DLSS into games, specifically noting PureDark’s work.
I asked then whether it was possible or desirable for Nvidia to actually offer them any support specifically, but was told it was not Nvidia’s place to get involved with a developer’s property if it wasn’t asked.
We’re still waiting for either Bethesda or AMD to comment on what the partnership might mean for competitor technologies, and will update if we hear anything new.