UPDATE: Bethesda has just announced on X that they will be releasing a series of updates that will include DLSS support for Starfield.
The online modding community is a very lively one. You can rely on modders to create just about anything for any video game. In Starfield’s case, one of the most sought-after mods involves the DLSS upscaler, which Bethesda did not include for its latest space RPG, favoring AMD’s FSR2.
On September 4, just four days into early access for Bethesda’s Premium and Constellation, modder PureDark released two mods for DLSS - DLSS2 and DLSS3.
He kept the frame generation feature exclusive to the DLSS3, which he also made exclusive to his Patreon sponsors. The DLSS2 is free on Nexus Mods but lacks frame generation capabilities.
PureDark charges $5 per month for the Supporter and $10 per month for his Big Supporter sponsors.
In a move unprecedented in the modding community, PureDark implemented DRM to ensure players who download the mod have actually paid for it. The move garnered negative reactions from players and other modders.
Some users on X thought that keeping the mod exclusive to subscribers was within PureDark’s rights, but they also said that the DRM addition took it a step too far.
Within hours of releasing the DLSS3 mod on his Patreon, however, a post appeared on a forum stating that they had cracked it and it was now available for free download.
Interestingly, another modder, LukeFZ, released his own DLSS3 mod and made it free. It was released on September 5, a day after PureDark released his two DLSS mods.
There’s no indication whether Bethesda will add native DLSS support for Nvidia users in Starfield. For now, it has an exclusive partnership with Bethesda. However, AMD’s Frank Azor hinted that DLSS may come to Starfield someday.
In an interview with The Verge, Azor explained that Bethesda wanted to leverage AMD technology for the Xbox Series X and Series S. The AMD gaming chief said they have no objections when Bethesda decides to incorporate DLSS into Starfield.
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