New Blood CEO slams Nvidia DLSS 5: “Who asked for this?”

New Blood Interactive’s CEO, David Oshry, and Dusk creator David Szymanski have joined the leading voices against Nvidia’s upcoming DLSS 5, which was revealed earlier at the company’s GTC event. Set for release this fall on RTX 50-series GPUs, Nvidia promises this new iteration of DLSS will deliver photorealistic lighting and enhanced detail by blending traditional rendering techniques with generative AI. However, many developers in the indie scene say it crosses a line that earlier iterations of DLSS never did.

New Blood CEO questions “who asked for” DLSS 5

New Blood Interactive is best known for PS1-stylized indie hits like ULTRAKILL, Dusk, Iron Lung, and Gloomwood. The company’s CEO, David Oshry, sat down with PC Gamer, directly addressed the DLSS 5 controversy, and didn’t hold back: “First of all, who asked for this? This isn’t even DLSS! Please tell me what generative AI has to do with Deep Learning Super Sampling.”

He noted that calling DLSS 5 something else, like “Nvidia Generative Upscaling,” would have caused further backlash, yet the DLSS 5 terminology seems to have slipped by. He further stated, “We all have working eyes and can see exactly what we think it is.”

Oshry says the most effective way to push back on Nvidia’s DLSS 5 technology will be by “voting with our wallets” and by “stop collaborating with them as developers.” Oshry thinks developers should take a stance against Nvidia to push the company to “go back to giving us what we want,” namely, GPUs with higher native performance and cheaper hardware at each generational leap. Oshry continued:

“We as developers and players need to push back against this bulls**t just like we did with NFTs and crypto games, and as we have tried in vain to do with predatory microtransactions, loot boxes, and battle passes.”

However, some developers, such as Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2’s director, say, “Haters won't be able to stop this,” referring to Nvidia’s upcoming technology. 

Dusk Creator David Szymanski says he’s tired of hearing DLSS 5 is ‘optional.’

In the midst of this, David Szymanski, the creator behind the Doom-inspired addictive cult shooter, also backed Oshry’s stance. He said that he’s tired of hearing that Nvidia’s DLSS 5 is entirely optional. Szymanski said:

“Optional like real-time GI? Optional, like any number of ‘optional’ features that anyone who has played an AA game in the past half decade can tell you aren’t really optional because games are now built to lean on those technologies.”

Szymanski agreed that DLSS has proven its worth in recent video games, especially with the release of DLSS 4.5. However, the tradeoffs have been quite steep. He stated, “It’s been at an immense cost to the clarity, accessibility, and playability of the games that use it.”

Oshry stepped into the conversation once again and said, “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?”