In a surprise announcement, Bethesda has revealed that they will be adding DLSS support to Starfield shortly.
As reported by Video Games Chronicle, Bethesda shared this information on Twitter.
Bethesda tweeted:
“We’ve been hard at work on @StarfieldGame updates and will be putting our next one into Steam Beta next week.
This update will feature Nvidia DLSS support with frame generation, display and HDR controls for supported systems, and other optimizations and improvements. You’ll be able to opt-in to try it via the Steam Beta options. We’d love your feedback before it goes live for all PC and Xbox players after that.
Stay tuned for the specifics soon, and thanks for playing!”
Starfield did not launch with DLSS support on PC, and Bethesda received fierce criticism for this choice. They announced a partnership with AMD, and they did launch the game with FSR support. While there are several upscaling technologies in the market, AMD does have an advantage for their GPUs and APUs comprising the majority of parts used by PC users.
Bethesda was not responsive to fans and media asking if they intended to add DLSS support in the future, given that Nvidia is second to AMD in the market. Intel is a new entry in this market with their Arc GPUs, and XeSS upscaling technology. Understandably, the demand is not as high for XeSS support on Starfield, but on principle, Bethesda should support those new GPUs as well.
A modder took it upon himself to provide DLSS support for Starfield via modding, but of course, it makes a difference when the developer officially supports it.
Even if many gamers won’t have trouble running the mod with the game, for gamers who are constrained from changing their computer settings, or may not have the knowhow to work with mods, official support is necessary.
Bethesda is also clear that this will be available on Steam Beta for now, so they are likely to still be working on it after user feedback before an official launch. It’s to Microsoft’s credit that they had the game published to Steam; while Starfield is also on PC Game Pass, Steam has a gamer user base that is quick with feedback, and very knowledgeable on what issues could come up in the game.
On one end, Microsoft did make money selling Starfield to Steam users. But the real value of publishing to Steam is right here; connecting with gamers of all kinds beyond what’s on Microsoft’s platforms.
