Nvidia‘s latest AI upscaling feature has drawn backlash from both players and developers, with some studios saying they learned about the technology’s visual effects the same time the public did.
Announced at the company’s GPU Technology Conference, DLSS 5 marks a significant departure from previous versions of the feature. Where earlier iterations of deep-learning super-sampling improved frame rates by rendering games at lower resolution before using AI to upscale the image, the new version applies generative AI directly to character faces, adding photorealistic details, lighting, and altered facial geometry in real time.
Developers at Capcom and Ubisoft — two studios whose games appeared in the official demo — were reportedly unaware of what the presentation would show, according to a report by Insider Gaming, and were surprised alongside the general public. Nvidia, Ubisoft, and Capcom did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Artists Say the Feature Overrides Their Work
The demo featured scenes from Capcom‘s Resident Evil Requiem, Ubisoft‘s Assassin’s Creed, Bethesda‘s Starfield, and a FIFA title. Critics on social media described the facial rendering as “yassified” and compared it to glamour filters on Instagram and Snapchat — smoothing features, enlarging eyes, and altering lip and nose shapes. The demo itself contained visible artifacts: in a FIFA sequence, a soccer ball showed what appeared to be net geometry superimposed on its surface before entering the goal.
“It devalues an artist’s creativity and intent on a basic level,” said James Brady, a video game artist who worked on Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3. “All this takes away from the artist’s original design intent on the character and its shape language, with what pretty much functions on a surface level as a ‘Snapchat filter.'”
Not everyone dismissed the underlying technology. Kevin Bates, CEO of open source handheld gaming device Arduboy, called it “quite an achievement” and said he would have expected a cloud-based service to deliver comparable results. “The fact they expect to distill it down to what can run on a single card later this year is insane,” he wrote.
Huang Defends the Feature as Developers Push Back
After a day of widespread criticism, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said gamers are “completely wrong” about DLSS 5. Game developer Marwan Mahmoud of Incrypt offered a more measured read: “The reaction from gamers is understandable. Some games started relying too heavily on these technologies instead of focusing on proper optimization. From a developer perspective, it feels a bit different because you see DLSS as a tool that helps rather than a core solution.”
That distinction sits at the center of the dispute. Previous versions of DLSS operated as optional performance aids that did not alter a game’s artistic content. DLSS 5 generates new visual information — faces, lighting, surface detail — that was never created by the studio’s artists, changing how finished work appears to players without requiring the developer’s prior knowledge of what those changes will look like.
Photo by Pixabay
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