MicroUnCThe problem is that Microsoft didn't care, Plus Respawn and Arcane studios lack devs who specialize in UE4.

yeah well, they could have. At least it would have saved some face and they wouldn't have to issue an apology to the masses
I mean, the company has many times over said that it would put a lot of focus on gaming. So...do it?

Devastator0Does this game (if purchased on Steam) experience the same issue that the Mass Effect Legendary Edition does in where if you unlock achievements, they don't actually unlock on Steam? I know that the issue for the ME:LE was caused by the upgrade and use of the "EA App" and there's a thread on the Steam forums about how to make sure you keep Origin installed & don't let it update so as not to break the achievement unlocking capability for that game. The thread even shows that EA was actively battling people's workarounds by trying to force the EA app to install.

Not sure - I won't buy a copy due to the EA client requirement. I've only occasionally looked at the Steam forums for it to see how the patches are coming along.

Chrispy_Wait, what? I must have missed some news.
How do/did AMD block DLSS?

There's absolutely no good reason why multi-million dollar AAA projects built on Unreal Engine which has DLSS plugins available wouldn't have DLSS in their PC version, and almost every time this happens there's AMD sponsorship that coincides with this strange, peculiar situation.

One game dev literally had DLSS fully functional and part of the demo, AMD sponsors the game, DLSS is removed.

In a sample size of 21 titles released over the last 2-3 years, FSR is NOT supported in 12.5% of Nvidia bundled/sponsored games and DLSS is NOT supported in 73% of AMD bundled/sponsored games. That's too big of a difference for it to be a "coincidence" and "up to the developer" - especially when considering the other evidence that supports it.

So, if you're waiting for or expecting an AMD marketing employee to go on record explicitly stating "our sponsorships/bundles block DLSS where possible" and that's all you might accept as concrete proof, don't hold your breath. Meanwhile I continue to follow the evidence to the most reasonable, likely conclusion, andvI accept that other people won't come to that conclusion.

wolfOne game dev literally had DLSS fully functional and part of the demo, AMD sponsors the game, DLSS is removed.

In a sample size of 21 titles released over the last 2-3 years, FSR is NOT supported in 12.5% of Nvidia bundled/sponsored games and DLSS is NOT supported in 73% of AMD bundled/sponsored games. That's too big of a difference for it to be a "coincidence" and "up to the developer" - especially when considering the other evidence that supports it.

Conjecture, and theorising rather than hard evidence of anticompetitive practises. Until a developer whistleblows, calling out AMD on forced removal of DLSS from AMD-sponsored games, I suspect the real reason for the lack of DLSS is that once FSR is introduced, there's no need to double the workload and also tweak/fix the DLSS implementation.

Cross-platform titles that include upscaling MUST include FSR, regardless of DLSS inclusion as well; All consoles, handhelds, and a growing portion of laptops use AMD graphics and cannot use DLSS, period.
Cross-platform titles that include FSR don't have to include DLSS. It's additional work that applies to none of the consoles or handhelds, and Nvidia GPU users can still use FSR.

The only valid data that would indicate foul-play would be if DLSS was removed from an AMD-sponsored PC-exclusive title. I'm not aware such a scenario exists yet. Just because developers might be using Nvidia hardware in their own PCs for early stages of the game development - they likely enable DLSS because Nvidia have pushed hard to make the tools easy and readily available - that doesn't mean that the final game designed to run on PS5 and Xbox are going to use DLSS!

FSR is 80-90% as good as DLSS on PC and unless Nvidia are going to provide financial incentive for the developer to do additional work to add and support DLSS as well as another upscaler, I'd imagine most developers implement FSR for cross-platform and call it a day - the "upscaling" checkbox feature is done and they have other things to do pre-launch than cater to a subset of a subset of their market. The console buyers make up the majority of their sales AND are easier to optimise for given the fixed hardware configurations. That's where developer allegiance lies - maximising their $ to effort ratio ;)

DLSS is nice to have. It's almost always better than FSR, but it's extra work for a developer that isn't mandatory and the additional value it provides is diminished further if an alternative upscaler is already implemented. For games where DLSS is implemented and FSR isn't, I would expect less of the reason to be AMD sponsorship and far more of the reason to be that the publisher wants the upscaling feature to work on the widest target audience possible, since that's likely to translate to more revenue.

Chrispy_Conjecture

Yes, but one that follows a strong evidentiary trail.

Chrispy_and theorising rather than hard evidence of anticompetitive practises. Until a developer whistleblows, calling out AMD on forced removal of DLSS from AMD-sponsored games, I suspect the real reason for the lack of DLSS is that once FSR is introduced, there's no need to double the workload and also tweak/fix the DLSS implementation.

One already has, so it's part of the trail I followed. Workload, give me a break, it's a god damn plugin for UE4, that would make the game ever more appealing to millions more potential buyers.

You suspect huh... sounds like conjecture. You don't have hard evidence as much as I do, we only disagree in the logic of the arguments for the unknown.

Chrispy_Cross-platform titles that include upscaling MUST include FSR, regardless of DLSS inclusion as well; All consoles, handhelds, and a growing portion of laptops use AMD graphics and cannot use DLSS, period.
Cross-platform titles that include FSR don't have to include DLSS. It's additional work that applies to none of the consoles or handhelds, and Nvidia GPU users can still use FSR.

All this additional work of clicking a few times must realllllly be hard fore these poor dev teams, dozens strong, working weeks, months, years to deliver a game, yeah screw DLSS why implement that! They can still use a clearly, demonstrably, repeatedly inferior tech, lets not click a few more times to make that situation better and appeal to more buyers....

Chrispy_The only valid data that would indicate foul-play would be if DLSS was removed from an AMD-sponsored PC-exclusive title. I'm not aware such a scenario exists yet. Just because developers might be using Nvidia hardware in their own PCs for early stages of the game development - they likely enable DLSS because Nvidia have pushed hard to make the tools easy and readily available - that doesn't mean that the final game designed to run on PS5 and Xbox are going to use DLSS!

Lovely, only being PC exclusive is your personal bar for this being possible. good luck with that.

Chrispy_FSR is 80-90% as good as DLSS on PC and unless Nvidia are going to provide financial incentive for the developer to do additional work to add and support DLSS as well as another upscaler, I'd imagine most developers implement FSR for cross-platform and call it a day - the "upscaling" checkbox feature is done and they have other things to do pre-launch than cater to a subset of a subset of their market. The console buyers make up the majority of their sales AND are easier to optimise for given the fixed hardware configurations. That's where developer allegiance lies - maximising their $ to effort ratio ;)

Financial incentive is in the sales incentive for RTX buyers, and it being.... that's right, sweet F*** A** work to do. easy incentive. Maximizing $$ to effort ratio is 1000x in favour of adding DLSS if any other upscaler is already added, to market your game to the widest target audience possible.

Chrispy_DLSS is nice to have.

Sure is, cheers AMD for making sure it isn't in some games.

Chrispy_It's almost always better than FSR

Correct.

Chrispy_but it's extra work for a developer that isn't mandatory and the additional value it provides is diminished further if an alternative upscaler is already implemented

hard disagree for reasons already covered, the incentive is easily realized. Developers must be starting to see this with the recent slate of games.

Chrispy_For games where DLSS is implemented and FSR isn't, I would expect less of the reason to be AMD sponsorship and far more of the reason to be that the publisher wants the upscaling feature to work on the widest target audience possible, since that's likely to translate to more revenue.

It seems daft to me that you so readily contradict yourself;

• The publisher wants the upscaling feature to work on the widest target audience possible
• financial incentive for the developer to do additional work to add and support DLSS

It's in adding a stupidly easily added feature to a game and widening it's sales possibilities. How much can it possibly cost for a dev to add DLSS to a UE4 game, a weeks wages? at most? that is easily made up by making your game more appealing to "the widest target audience possible".

I absolutely don't expect you to agree with me, by virtue most will argue till death, but I sincerely doubt you can change my mind, but knock yourself out if you have anything new, beyond the arguments your've already made, to add. those ones already fell flat...

So as I often do on internet discussion... I offer that perhaps you'd rather agree to disagree.

F*** AMD's anti consumer BS with this game.

I'm not sure what you're getting at.

A dev wants to add upscaling.

1. They can add one upscaler that works for all of their customers
2. They can add one upscaler that doesn't work for the majority of their customers
3. They can add multiple upscalers to provide the best upscaler for all of their customers

That's listed in the order of value to the developer.

If you've worked with developers, or you are a developer, you'd know that adding in DLSS is not 'stupidly easy'. I think that's where we disagree - and if I thought like you did that adding it in was completely trivial and a non-issue, then I 100% agree with your theory of foul play. The problem is that getting your game working with any upscaler introduces issues that do require work, patches, manual tweaking, changes to the rendering pipeline and considerations to your UI and static element scaling. Even devs I know who have dynamic resolution with their own internal software scalers can't always implement a GPU-accelerated scaler that easily - and they've already done a lot of the work to decouple the camera viewport from all the other overlay, screen-space, and UI elements.

I am guessing that games with FSR rarely have DLSS because the FSR implementation satisfies the "upscales on all platforms" criteria they have to meet, and there's no incentive to go and add XeSS and/or DLSS on top of that. Just because Nvidia has managed to get DLSS integration to Unity and Unreal doesn't automatically mean that DLSS is just a box to tick for developers to get it working properly. Is it easier? Sure! But it's not just a case of clicking a button and having it work. Nvidia themselves need to get involved with DLSS implementations to get anything other than a FSR-equivalent generic upscaler, too. So whilst the list of games that support DLSS is growing, it's still only 200+ which is a very small slice of all games launched since the technology was introduced - testament to the fact that it is extra work, and it's not just as simple as turning the feature on in the game engine and calling it a day.

If there was foul play involved, I'm sure we'd have had whistleblowers by now. AMD and Nvidia have already been called out for other shenanigans in the past relating to API support, Physx, hairworks, tesselation etc. If things were dubious you can bet some disgruntled developer would have let out an angry tweet by now - but we've heard nothing.

Chrispy_A dev wants to add upscaling.

1. They can add one upscaler that works for all of their customers
2. They can add one upscaler that doesn't work for the majority of their customers
3. They can add multiple upscalers to provide the best upscaler for all of their customers

That's listed in the order of value to the developer.

Didn't realise you were qualified to speak on behalf of all developers! I reject this assessment and assert that #3 would be the best value to the developer. Maximum appeal to possible buyers without significantly increasing work requirements.

Chrispy_If you've worked with developers, or you are a developer, you'd know that adding in DLSS is not 'stupidly easy'. I think that's where we disagree

Disagree with it all you like, but it's the truth, it is stupidly easy when upscaling is already there, as evidenced by FSR to DLSS mods and what real game devs have said, like being handled by 1 person and done in a few days, while working against and around DRM no less.

I am yet to see any compelling evidence whatsoever, that adding DLSS is in very hard or significantly time consuming when other upscalers are involved, enough as to outweigh the benefits of adding it.

Chrispy_- and if I thought like you did that adding it in was completely trivial and a non-issue, then I 100% agree with your theory of foul play

Well it's the case, especially so for this game, so foul play is most likely.

Chrispy_If there was foul play involved, I'm sure we'd have had whistleblowers by now.

We do already have one, and again, as the rest of the stack of evidence adds up, ease of implementation, sponsorship fuckery and trends, it's easily the most likely outcome.

Again, if you expect AMD to come out and say it, don't hold your breath, and the developers could be under NDA's regarding the specifics of the sponsorships.

I offer you again to agree to disagree, I'm repeating myself, so are you, and again if those are the points to your argument, I don't find them compelling or to be the case at all. So if you can't change my mind, and I can't change yours, where does that leave us?

EDIT: Covers it quite nicely, and I agree wholeheartedly with his logic and evidence driven assessment.

wolfEDIT: Covers it quite nicely, and I agree wholeheartedly with his logic and evidence driven assessment.

Yep, Daniel Owen tends to have a pretty level-headed approach to rumours and leaks, but he's not adding any new facts and he's making the (false) assumption that AMD's marketing/PR department has an ounce of competency - and we have nearly two decades of empirical data proving the opposite. I feel both you and Daniel Owen could benefit from Hanlon's razor; "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence".

I was reminded of this thread because I've just watched this:

The short answer is that "AMD sponsored" does not mean money has changed hands, just that AMD has volunteered their expertise in assisting the developer in some way.
To put this to rest we'd need a developer to chime in. Is AMD clean? Unlikely. They're just as bad as Nvidia in terms of anti-consumer, anti-competitive practices these days - but I still go with innocent until proven guilty, and I still believe in this age of leaks, tweets, and whistleblowing we'd have heard something from a disgruntled developer - ie, there's no smoke without fire but I'm not even seeing smoke yet.

I'm genuinely curious to see if this blows up, because if it turns out to be true it will be one of the bigger scandals AMD are guilty of. It still wouldn't come close to levelling with Nvidia who have multiple serious counts of anti-consumer scandals in the last 5 years - lying to the SEC about how many GPUs they funnelled into crypto, partner outcry and the exit of EVGA from GPU manufacture, the maligned Nvidia GPP that was shut down because it was basically illegal in much of the world, and of course it's hard to forget the banning/blacklisting of review sites/channels because they refused to play by Nvidia's rules and show skewed/biased reviews of Geforce cards. That had most of the independent reviewer community coming together to publicly and loudly tell Nvidia that they were sick of their manupulation and shady intereference with what is supposed to be independent and impartial journalism.

Chrispy_I feel both you and Daniel Owen could benefit from Hanlon's razor; "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence".

It's an interesting Philosophical razor, but not a universal rule that applies to every situation, I stand by my assessment. Could I be wrong? absolutely, but at this rate I don't think I am, like many others, and we may never actually get told this from the horses mouth, and even if they said something, people could claim it's bulldust. I suspect if it was as easy as to say 'we don't block' like Nvidia did, they'd have done it by now. I'll eat my humble pie if AMD and major dev's of FSR only games all say that this is absolutely not the case.

Chrispy_I was reminded of this thread because I've just watched this:

Yes I saw it too, I recall they they did conclude something fucky is going on, like Jedi survivor for instance absolutely should have had DLSS, and modern AAA titles, Developers absolutely have the time, resourcing and manpower to add these things, especially when its based in an engine where it's easy, borderline trivial, to impalement.

I'm not really into the whataboutism, I decry when Nvidia pulls bs moves too, like this heinous 4050 4060 that just landed, and removing local game streaming from my Shield device, I just call them like I see them, and I still think, no matter how it's logistically being pulled off, AMD is the cause of no DLSS in many of their sponsored titles. I don't think throwing out Nvidia examples and philosophical razors will change my mind on that, but I know what will (above).

wolfIt's an interesting Philosophical razor, but not a universal rule that applies to every situation, I stand by my assessment. Could I be wrong? absolutely, but at this rate I don't think I am, like many others, and we may never actually get told this from the horses mouth, and even if they said something, people could claim it's bulldust. I suspect if it was as easy as to say 'we don't block' like Nvidia did, they'd have done it by now. I'll eat my humble pie if AMD and major dev's of FSR only games all say that this is absolutely not the case.

Yes I saw it too, I recall they they did conclude something fucky is going on, like Jedi survivor for instance absolutely should have had DLSS, and modern AAA titles, Developers absolutely have the time, resourcing and manpower to add these things, especially when its based in an engine where it's easy, borderline trivial, to impalement.

I'm not really into the whataboutism, I decry when Nvidia pulls bs moves too, like this heinous 4050 4060 that just landed, and removing local game streaming from my Shield device, I just call them like I see them, and I still think, no matter how it's logistically being pulled off, AMD is the cause of no DLSS in many of their sponsored titles. I don't think throwing out Nvidia examples and philosophical razors will change my mind on that, but I know what will (above).

I suspect the truth lies somewhere in the middle.

AMD could well be discouraging developers from adopting DLSS, but at the same time treading very carefully - carefully enough to not step on any toes and not upset anyone within the developer or publisher.

The only thing that you can absolutely iron-clad guarantee is that Neither Nvidia nor AMD will ever act in the best interests of us, the customer, unless it coincidentally occurs as a side-effect of something they're doing for their own gain.

Chrispy_The only thing that you can absolutely iron-clad guarantee is that Neither Nvidia nor AMD will ever act in the best interests of us, the customer, unless it coincidentally occurs as a side-effect of something they're doing for their own gain.

Now there's something we can all agree on.

wolf

The rumour mill is picking up speed; LTT will run with this I suspect, at which point it'll pick up mainstream momentum and AMD will have to provide a definitive answer - no skirting the question.

If they actually confirm they've been persuading developers to cease DLSS support, then they'll likely put forward some marketing peon to take the fall, pretend to come clean, and continue with the shady shit behind the scenes; i.e. business as usual for any large corporation.

If AMD confirm that they haven't been blocking DLSS then all eyes will be on Bethesda and that's potentially when the whistle-blowers will come out of the woodwork if shady DLSS blocking did get pushed down from AMD despite their claims.

@Chrispy_ to me the smoking gun is multiple non answers to the easy question. If the answer was no we don't / didn't / won't block, they'd have said it already. I'm 100% convinced at this point something fucky is up at AMD.

wolf@Chrispy_ to me the smoking gun is multiple non answers to the easy question. If the answer was no we don't / didn't / won't block, they'd have said it already. I'm 100% convinced at this point something fucky is up at AMD.

It's certainly looking that way.

Nobody's actually asked Bethesda yet, have they? There's just this whole accusation that AMD are doing it and while AMD haven't denied it they're also terrible at PR.
It just needs one journalist with a solid reputation to ask Bethesda directly if AMD asked them to take out DLSS support. Anything other than an outright denial would essentially confirm it, because Bethesda wouldn't be defending themselves from simple PR damage, they'd be defending AMD which has lawsuit potential if AMD disagree with the answer.

I get that AMD are looking pretty sus here, but all of the coverage of this is just re-examination of the same line of reasoning that we've had for the last fortnight. You never assess a situation using a single point of view, you never try the accused without listening to both the prosecutor's witnesses and the defense witnesses. Science isn't just seeing a hypothesis proven one way, it's equally about attempting to disprove that hypothesis.

If it looks like AMD have placed a gagging order on Bethesda, then the press should ask Bethesda that directly rather than continuing to pursue circular reasoning.