Starfield’s DLSS mod is a worthwhile tweak mired in tedious DRM discourse

rockpapershotgun.com:

"Modders will fix it" is a cliché, but the thing about clichés is they’re rooted in fact. So it is with Starfield, which already has a DLSS mod ready to patch in the class-leading Nvidia upscaler that Bethesda left out in favour of AMD FSR 2.

It’s the work of seasoned modder PureDark, previously seen hammering both DLSS and FSR into Skyrim. I’ve tried the Starfield mod and it works rather nicely, granting a visible quality boost on RTX graphics cards while equalling FSR’s ability to smooth out Starfield’s sometimes-tricky performance. Unfortunately (and largely by association), it’s also been dragged into a spot of nasty business, one involving a separate mod for DLSS 3 frame generation and PureDark’s application of DRM.

See, the main DLSS upscaling mod is free to download and install, as you’d expect. But PureDark’s other Starfield DLSS mod, which adds AI-powered frame interpolation for those with RTX 40 series GPUs, is only available to his Patreon backers, with the mod itself including copy protection software to block non-subscribers from employing it. Which I suppose he’s entitled to do, though it’s not exactly in the spirit of PC game modding.

Sure enough, the frame generation mod’s paid-for release invoked a lot of that other grand PC gaming tradition: arguing, especially among those who remember Valve and Bethesda’s own doomed attempt at introducing paid mods for Skyrim. Now, just a couple of days onward, that DRM has been cracked, meaning Starfield now such a thing as pirated mods. Deary me.

I haven’t tried DLSS 3 frame gen in Starfield myself; not to come over all Centrist Dad In Space, but I’m interested neither in paying for mods nor in downloading anything from dodgy crack sites. I’m mainly just sad because