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AMD is Starfield’s Exclusive PC Partner

Hoo boy. Not a good look AMD. It was scummy when nVidia did this, it's scummy when you do it.

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  • you can use FSR on Nvidia too but you can't use DLSS on AMD. Nvidia has been trying so hard to force a monopoly for decades now with these features they lock down to not only their hardware but specific series of them.

    it's reminiscent of Microsoft making sure Linux can't use a wide range of software via directx and such, forcing people to resort to WINE and effectively becoming an operating system monopoly outside of apples gated garden

    meanwhile AMD let's everyone use their software tech and people cry foul the moment they do 1/1000th of the anti competitive behavior Nvidia does in its sleep, I mean this is literally just sponsoring a game

    • Nvidia literally refuted this argument and come out and say they don't force devs to leave out FSR. DLSS workshop also includes tools for devs to put FSR and XeSS in their games along with DLSS.

      Where as AMD responded with PR bullshit and fuckall.

      https://www.tweaktown.com/news/92002/amd-sponsored-games-with-fsr-dont-feature-nvidia-dlss-support-and-thats-little-strange/index.html

      • NVIDIA does not and will not block, restrict, discourage, or hinder developers from implementing competitor technologies in any way.

        lmao this is such a straight up lie. NVIDIA is one of the most anti-competitive companies in the industry.

        Of course, this is pure conjecture and unsubstantiated

        OK

        • I'm struggling to find games released in the last two years that support DLSS but not FSR.

          The problem is, like it or not, DLSS is way better than FSR. So naturally, people who have capable hardware feel a little miffed when they are saddled with the inferior solution.

          Plenty can be said about Nvidia's anticompetitive practices, but I don't think this is explicitly one of them. They don't block games from supporting FSR, though probably not out of the goodness of their heart. They know DLSS is better, so having games support both makes it a lot easier for reviewers and consumers to make this comparison. AMD obviously doesn't want this unfavorable comparison, which is why they pay developers to not include DLSS.

          • Or, just a thought here, it's because FSR is open source. You can literally go look at it on github right now.

            DLSS is not. Guess which one is easier to implement into a game? If you guessed FSR, you'd be right. You don't need to involve AMD the company at all to implement FSR into your game. That is not true of DLSS and Nvidia.

            You're taking a selection bias as a causative argument from a conclusion.

            DLSS being closed source is literally an example of Nvidia's anticompetitiveness, by definition.

            • I think it's a stretch to claim that proprietary software is inherently anticompetitive, though I won't argue that Nvidia as a whole is often very anticompetitive.

              Implementing DLSS is no more fundamentally difficult than implementing FSR. Source-availability only makes things easier in certain edge cases, most uses will just use the precompiled library provided by the vendor. You don't need any kind of special permission or agreement with Nvidia to use DLSS. The interface for these libraries is so similar that there are already community-made wrappers that adapt between the two for games that only support one.

              • a stretch to claim that proprietary software is inherently anticompetitive

                That's exactly the point of making something proprietary. Like, literally the point, so your competitors cannot use it. It's anti competitive.

                no more fundamentally difficult than implementing FSR

                So we've established:

                1. That FSR is freely available to implement

                2. That DLSS is proprietary

                3. That FSR is on more games than DLSS and/or that games with DLSS often have FSR.

                4. That DLSS works only on NVIDIA cards

                5. that FSR works on, for all intents and purposes, all cards.

                And you think it's evidence of foul play that FSR is on more games? Really? You don't see how your sampling bias has played into this?

                • You really don't believe AMD sponsoring these games has anything to do with it?

                  Ease of implementation in most cases can't have anything to do with it, because most games don't even need to do any work to enable it. DLSS is "free as in beer", meaning we don't have to pay any licensing fees to use it. DLSS support is included in Unreal and Unity, right alongside FSR. They're both just checkboxes. Being open source is not a factor here. The distinction between gratis and libre is a much more philosophical concern than a technical one. Trust me, as a developer, a library being proprietary means very little to us when building a video game. What we care about is how much money it costs, and what do we get for that money.

                  AMD isn't your friend anymore than Nvidia, they just want you to think they are because they don't have an abusable market position yet.

                  • You really don’t believe AMD sponsoring these games has anything to do with it?

                    I don't think aliens are abducting people either, no. Again, you're starting with a conclusion, finding sample biased not-even-data, and saying "see?"

                    This isn't evidence of AMD locking DLSS out. This is just someone being upset NVIDIA doesnt get special treatment all the time, because FSR is just a bigger market for developers to sink time into.

                    Which by the way, for in house engines, FSR or DLSS are nontrivial dev times. Even for unity or unreal they can be nontrivial depending on your game.

                    DLSS support is included in Unreal and Unity

                    This is obviously so neither here nor there that it's silly. Last I checked starfield wasn't on unity.

                    AMD isn’t your friend anymore than Nvidia

                    Have I said AMD is my friend, or am I calling someone out on wild speculation with no evidence?

                    • Starfield isn't relevant to my argument, we don't actually know for certain if it will include DLSS. People are speculating that it won't based on the established pattern of AMD-sponsored games skipping DLSS.

                      I think there is merit to this pattern. It's not something people started bringing up until there actually was a recongizable pattern. If there were any AMD-sponsored games with DLSS, then this would all be nonsensical. But there aren't. For the majority of AMD sponsored games, adding DLSS support is as simple as ticking a checkbox, so the fact that they don't is suspicious.

                      Consider this: Why is it that pretty much every non-AMD sponsored game that supports FSR 2.0 also supports DLSS?

                      Have I said AMD is my friend, or am I calling someone out on wild speculation with no evidence?

                      We have a pattern that fits perfectly in line with common scummy business behavior, what conclusion do you expect people to draw? The fact that you find this just as unbelievable as alien abductions really makes it sound like you don't even want to consider any of these possibilities.

                      We've established that

                      1. Direct comparisons between FSR and DLSS are unfavorable to AMD
                      2. AMD is paying developers to implement their technologies like FSR
                      3. Game developers have no real trepidation about using proprietary middleware and APIs beyond their licensing costs, of which DLSS has none.

                      It is not much of a stretch to argue that AMD wouldn't want the games they sponsor to be using a competitor's technology, especially if it makes theirs look bad. This is a perfectly valid hypothesis that does not rely on any unreasonable assumptions, and does not contradict the data points we already have.

                      You're really making mountains out of molehills here, and I don't think you even have any real development experience. So I'm not sure why I should trust your suppositions over my own firsthand experience.

    • I mean this is literally just sponsoring a game

      This usually means only FSR, no DLSS. What does it matter that FSR can be used on all hardware, if it's the inferior technology? Let those who can use DLSS, and others FSR and XeSS.

      Since it's your mom-and-pop multi-billion dollar company, it's fine that they screw over consumers. They are not like the evil multi-billion dollar company from down the road.

      • Keeping out a vendor-specific one in favor of a vendor-agnostic one seems actually positive to me. That vendor-specific "superiority" must be fought.

        • Agreed. The net effect of this kind of choice - what the person above you is saying - is exactly the intended effect. It lowers the value of Nvidia users' cards to them, but, critically, only because Nvidia plays these bullshit exclusivity games.

          Nvidia users can't get the most out of their cards on a big, popular new game and they're all mad about it? Well, there's an easy fix, Nvidia, to prevent these situations in the future: Just open DLSS up to everybody. Boom, done. AMD and Bethesda aren't the ones being assholes, here, and it's not their fault that Nvidia's customers aren't getting the most out of their cards.

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