This week’s DF Direct Weekly: AMD and Bethesda’s Exclusive Partnership for Starfield Raises Concerns of Blocked Competitor Technologies
DF Direct Weekly delves into the exclusive partnership between AMD and Bethesda Game Studios for their highly anticipated game, Starfield. While such arrangements are not uncommon in the industry, there are worries that this collaboration may hinder other superior upscaling solutions, specifically Nvidia’s DLSS and Intel’s XeSS, from being implemented in the game.
Exclusive Deal Controversy
The concern arises from the possibility of AMD paying to ensure that rival technologies, which may offer better image quality than AMD’s Radeon features, are blocked from appearing in Starfield. Essentially, instead of developing their own competitive upscaling solutions, AMD is accused of using an exclusive partnership to limit GPU owners to only the image quality provided by AMD graphics cards. Notably, neither AMD nor Bethesda have denied these claims.
The Origins of Controversy
This controversy was sparked by an article from WCCFTech, which highlighted that several AMD-sponsored titles, such as Dead Island 2, The Callisto Protocol, and Star Wars Jedi: Survivor, were using FSR2 upscaling while omitting DLSS and XeSS alternatives. Although these games are based on Unreal Engine 4, which supports DLSS and XeSS, the plug-ins were not utilized. This led to suspicions surrounding sponsorships that favor only one technology and potentially limit the gaming experience for PC users.
No Smoking Gun
The situation is more nuanced than initially suggested. According to our own investigation, one of the games listed by WCCFTech lacked DLSS support due to the developer’s policy of integrating features only when they have access to the source code. On the other hand, we received information from a programmer who worked on an AMD-sponsored title where their DLSS integration work was excluded from the final release.
AMD and Bethesda’s Silence
Despite attempts to seek clarification from both AMD and Bethesda, no response has been received. However, Stephen Burke from Gamers Nexus posed the question to AMD and received a noncommittal response. While not definitive proof, the lack of a denial raises concerns about the quality of the gaming experience for RTX or Arc users seeking the best upscaling solution for their hardware.
Possible Explanations
In the absence of a clear response, various arguments and explanations have been put forward. One suggestion is that AMD was chosen because FSR2 is the only upscaling solution compatible with consoles and all PC hardware. However, this should not limit options for PC users. Another argument is that integrating additional upscaling features may involve development costs for the studio. Nonetheless, both Nvidia and Intel have engineers available to work directly with game developers, especially for highly anticipated releases like Starfield.
In conclusion, while the full details of the exclusive partnership between AMD and Bethesda remain unclear, concerns regarding the potential exclusion of competitor upscaling technologies persist. It is now up to Bethesda to address these concerns and ensure that gamers will have access to the best quality upscaling options for their respective hardware.