Dusk Developer and New Blood CEO Level Harsh Criticisms Against DLSS 5 “At This Rate Why Make Game Art At All?”

DLSS 5 has been under fire almost since the moment NVIDIA revealed the technology. While some, including some game developers and studios, have seen the ML-based technology as a positive for game development, and while there are still questions surrounding the practical applications of DLSS 5, many have criticized both NVIDIA and DLSS 5 for “sloppifying” games and drastically altering the artist’s intent. Recently, David Szymanski and Dave Oshry, the game developer behind Dusk and Iron Lung, and the CEO of game studio New Blood Interactive, respectively, spoke about DLSS 5 in an interview with PC Gamer, echoing many of the concerns of gamers and leveling harsh criticisms at NVIDIA for the way it has handled the response to the new tech.

Oshry, who later expanded on the interview in a post on Bluesky, opened his comments by asking “First of all, who asked for this!?” and going on to say that DLSS 5 deviates from the original idea behind DLSS 5, which was fundamentally a technology used to increase frame rates using an upscaled image without substantial detail loss. He criticizes NVIDIA for calling a generative AI product DLSS, stating that “they’re hiding this Gen AI bullshit behind the DLSS moniker because they think we’re stupid,” encouraging gamers to push back against the tech and vote with their wallets, “just like we did with NFTs and crypto games.” Oshry mentions that one of the common defenses for DLSS 5 is that its optional, but goes on to question where tech like DLSS 5 leads while criticizing NVIDIA for recent hardware trends: “You know what’s not optional? Paying more for less—which is what we’ve been doing with NVIDIA for years now.” He continues along this line further down, comparing the tech to the other NVIDIA tech that either flopped or was left by the wayside, like 3Dvision and PhysX, and more modern tech, like RTX and Path tracing, all of which had their merits, questioning the merits of DLSS 5. “This is fundamentally changing the way video games look based on artificial intelligence that’s been trained on Instagram models and Epstein memes. Are you serious?” The game developer closes off by sarcastically asking “At this rate, why make game art at all? Why not just draw some shapes and colors and let AI generate what it thinks it should look like? After all, who cares, the only thing that matters is “realism” right?” Oshry’s full statement follows.