NVIDIA’s DLSS 5 demonstrations have done most of the damage so far. During the GTC showcase back in March, DLSS 5 was run over Resident Evil Requiem and Starfield, but viewers immediately noticed that characters like Requiem’s Leon Kennedy and Grace Ashcroft came out with smoothed, glossy faces that, instead of being photorealistic, looked like a beauty filter, with “yassified” becoming the Internet’s term for the effect. The most-liked comment under NVIDIA’s reveal video, comparing the output to an AI-generated image, outnumbers the video’s own likes, with another user quipping, “We have achieved it, everything looks like a YouTube thumbnail now.” Within a day, arguments that gamers are right to be disgusted by NVIDIA’s DLSS 5 were everywhere the demos were shared.
Responding to the backlash on its reveal video, an NVIDIA representative wrote that “game developers have full, detailed artistic control” over DLSS 5 to “ensure they maintain their game’s unique aesthetic.”
The backlash against DLSS 5 extends well beyond aesthetics, though, with several notable artists and developers having questioned NVIDIA’s intent with the software. Karla Ortiz, an artist who has worked with Ubisoft and Blizzard, wrote on Bluesky that the technology is “so disrespectful to the intentional art direction of devs,” arguing studios that wanted hyperrealism would’ve built it themselves. Valid points have also been made about convergence: if hundreds of games pass through the same model trained on the same idea of realism, their distinct looks start to blur together. Bethesda responded to early Starfield footage by saying its art teams will tune the effect and that it will be optional for players, while Capcom reportedly wasn’t aware(!) its game would appear in the demo at all.
Huang unfortunately made things much, much worse before he made them better, responding that “Well, first of all, they’re completely wrong,” when asked about the criticism during a GTC Q&A. His argument was that DLSS 5 operates at the geometry level under full developer control rather than as a filter slapped over finished frames.
Since the build leaked in late August, players have injected it into everything from Control to Monster Hunter Rise. Early testers criticized the Control mod’s image quality and performance cost, but the same clips impressed enough gamers that TechRadar reported the first signs of the “negative tide turning.” DLSS 5 is scheduled to be officially released this fall, with developer-tuned implementations that’ll show whether NVIDIA’s claims about developer control hold up better than its demos did.
