https://www.gamescensor.com/2023/09/starfield-players-pirate-its-dlss-mod-after-the-developer-locks-it-behind-a-paywall.html
Starfield gamers have begun pirating a popular upscale mod for the game after the developer placed it behind a paywall. The mod, as its name implies
The author wasn't selling DLSS, they were selling a shim to make it work with Starfield. That does require original work.
It's not original work. The reason he can do that to Starfield but not, say, Bully Scholarship Edition is because the work was done for him on Starfield: the engine already provides the data.
Replacements from FSR 2 to DLSS are not uncommon, not new, and not special. They require very little work.
There is indeed a tiny nugget of original code there, but it's absolutely useless without the actual DLSS tech and the actual engine doing the work.
Knowing how to do the work is most of the value here. Yes, it's easy for those of us with the knowhow, but most people do not have that.
Think of an artist who can whip up a cool drawing in about 10 minutes. It was "easy" in the moment, but only because they spent years learning and practicing the skills to make it so. You aren't entitled to that artists labor for free just because it only took them a few minutes.
Sit your average gamer down with a copy of Starfield and nvngx_dlss.dll and they won't be able to do anything useful with it.
It's great that most modders and some artists like to share their work for free with the rest of the world, but the rest of us aren't entitled to any of it.
You only have to pay for this mod once.
An artist isn’t going to continue making modifications to a painting once you’ve bought it, not unless you pay them to do so. Presuming they aren’t feeling generous with their time.
I still might choose to take a picture of my buddy's cool drawing that he bought rather than buying my own copy. Though I agree that I am certainly not entitled to a free print at the author's expense.
Conversely, if I bought that drawing myself and it came with reflective glass glued to the front, so that pictures turned out blurry, I might be a little annoyed. Now I can't roll it up and put it with my other drawings without special accommodations. Also, I bought it and if I want to take a picture of it or wipe my ass with it then that is my choice. Making the life of your customers more difficult so you can make a little extra money is going to lose you some of those customers.
Not that I begrudge someone for making good money, but that dude said he is making $40k a month from his Patreon for DLSS3 mods. Does he really feel like he isn't get paid what his time was worth, or is he just getting greedy in a community that is usually more aligned with FOSS concepts?
Honestly, 90% of programming work now is "I got X library to work inside of Y new system in Z engine". It makes sense too - it's exceedingly rare that it makes sense to reinvent someone else's wheel - and at times, not insignificant to implement the right hooks.
Things don't need to be novel and amazing to be marketable. And if it's that trivial, rather than pirating it people would just rewrite it. The fact that they're stealing it means it has value.
novel and amazing
They don't need to be, you're right. They should be more than a third party's DLL file though.
people would just rewrite it
They did in less than 24 hours.
it has value
DLSS is got a lot of value, people want that into their games. If that's using two lines of code from modder X or Y is irrelevant.
Strange how they felt the need to pirate his non-work instead of just doing it themselves?
Considering there are 3 alternative versions, free, made in less than 24 hours, looks like people made it themselves.
But alas, commenting without a 10 second search is a good idea indeed.
There's no need to do a search. People are paying for this product. Meaning they couldn't find it elsewhere.
And starfield itself is useless without a huge stack of technology that someone else made. That’s just how software works.
Hang on. You are telling me that schooling, parenting, and growing up in a community contributed to MY knowledge. And that, magically, will influence my art? Nonsense! I am a conduit for God.
Do you copy and paste comments from reddit? I read this exact comment last night I am SURE of it
Yes. Lemmy still sucks and everybody who isn't in niche communities knows it. Lemmy is the same article spammed across 100 communities cross posted again across 100 instances, memes for teenagers, and Star Trek memes apparently.
The author wasn’t selling DLSS
So NVidia's DLLs for DLSS are not included? (Honest question, I don't even own the game.)
That was already answered by the other commenter, I was supplying additional information
No, they are not included. The mod I use to enable it linked to a site that archives all the different DLSS DLL file versions. Honestly though, I couldn't tell a difference between FSR2 and DLSS 3.5 in graphical fidelity nor performance (I have a 5950x and RX 3090).
In case anyone's curious about the performance with those specs: I average around 60fps at 1440p with everything maxed out when I'm in the major city, New Atlantis (haven't gotten to another huge hub yet). In smaller areas/indoors/in space, I get around 100fps.
Are you sure the mod you're using is injecting DLSS3? Using the DLSS 3.5 DLL is not related to that. If it's only injecting DLSS2, it would be entirely expected to see negligible performance difference vs. FSR2.
"DLSS2" and "DLSS3" are not references to the version of the DLL. They are references to different output modes of the DLL, which is also backwards compatible, i.e. the 3.5 DLL can output either mode. The Starfiels mods that were available immediately at launch do not use DLSS3, or by extension frame generation. It doesn't matter which DLL version you use
Well that's what I'm saying. My 3090 can use 3.5 but it can't do the frame generation feature that 3.5 is capable of, therefore the performance gain is negligible over FSR2. The mod I used did support DLSS 3 + frame gen.
I don’t know in this particular case, but the mods I have seen require you to provide the Nvidia DLL yourself.
But DLSS is an Nvidia DLL, you’re not even licensed to redistribute it - and you’re not doing anything special, you’re hooking into the data the engine spews out for FSR.
If it's not anything special, someone else could just "easily" reproduce it instead of having to pirate it?
They have, literally just a few hours slower than this guy charging people: https://www.nexusmods.com/starfield/mods/761
Can you link where it says you can't redistribute DLSS? The Dev guide states pretty clearly it's free to use with Nvidia gpus.
We are talking about a paid mod here. The very document you shared explains how unless predicted by the license, you can't sell the components of the SDK, including the DLSS redistributable.
They are not distributing components of the dll. They are creating a modification of a Bethesda game which has allowed modding at the discretion of Bethesda.
The Nvidia dll is being redistributed without modification for an Nvidia GPU as exactly described.
Do you think every single game publisher negotiated a deal or paid money to ensure DLSS in their game? Can you point out any documentation outside of the direct reference to the SDK license that I linked that is in direct opposition to what your are saying? Can you point to me any discussion what so ever about paying to implement DLSS?
If it’s so trivial to do why doesn’t everyone do it on their own?
If it’s any easy mod to replicate it seems like it won’t have much self life as a paid mod.
why doesn't everyone do it on their own?
They did. I can browse Nexus Mods today and there's alternative DLSS injectors.
Consider doing a 5 minute search before replying.
Everyone, calm down. I am better than all of you anyway so shoo along. Go somewhere else while I sit here. Majestically. Admiring how brilliant I am in conflict resolution. Veritable peace maker, I is. Why, the UN should call me....hello? Uh. Where'd yall go?
Just to clarify for everyone, only this clown's DLSS 3 mod (3 as in frame generation) is paywalld. His dlss 2 mod (2 as in normal dlss) is free on nexus.
Also to all the mental gymnasts trying to justify this horse shit, remember, the patreon sub is $5/MONTH. This means if you buy 1 month at $5 to download the mod, and the author "conveniently" comes out with an update one month later, you need to subscibe for another $5. So basically it's a fucking subscription for a god damn dlss 3 mod. You know the author is milking this bullshit to keep subscibers and keep his income flowing. Marty mcfly does the same fucking dogshit with his stupid ass RTGI reshade shaders. Fuck that shit. Those people can go get fucked.
Does this type of mod break with updates, or could you potentially just stay on the version you downloaded and forego any updates? I don't mod much to the point where I've paid for any, but curious the requisite of ongoing subscription for this type of thing.
That's a good question. I'm not sure but I'd assume it would break with updates. I was thinking more about just updates the author makes to make the mod better. Likely he'll keep working on making it better but you can bet your booty thay he'll keep making minor updates once a month to milk his subsciber's money. Patreon is a fucking scam.
That McFly guy has been riding the "It'll be released soon™" train for something like five years at this point.
DLSS 3 is way better than 2, so I pirated the shit out of that mod. Frame Generation is a game changer. It's like a magic button that gives you an extra 30-60 FPS for free. Never understood the hate.
DLSS 3 is far worse than DLSS 2 IMO.
There's basically zero disadvantage to turning on DLSS 2. Most of the time you cannot or can barely tell the difference.
DLSS 3 introduces lots of artifacting, some frames straight up look like DALL-E image, it adds input lag, and it needs you to already have a high framerate to start with to make it bearable, text in particular gets mangled by it.
Fast paced games and games that rely on quick reactions are a no-go for DLSS 3. It's suitable for games like MS flight sim where adding input lag doesn't really matter and there's not rapid movement.
Knock it off with the fake news. My TV artifacts more than my 4090 when converting 24Hz films to 60/120. You can't even notice any artifacting in DLSS 3 without taking screenshots and pixel-peeping. Quit talking out of your ass. DLSS 3 FG works amazingly well in Starfield.
You're arguing about visual fidelity with someone who uses their TV to "convert 24hz movies to 120fps". It's the equivalent of the guy who got into a heated debate over Italian food with a Redditor that also posted about drinking his own piss on /r/piss.
Yes, because comparing apples to oranges is the same thing as drinking your own piss. Get real, my dude.
Do you not understand how analogy works? Nobody is comparing what you did with drinking piss.
Why do people hate on it? I thought ot was pretty clear that it's great. Unfortunately i can't use it since I have a 3080.
It's great if you have a decent framerate to start with, but it really struggles at lower framerates and you'll get a lot of ugly artifacts if there's any rapid movement on screen.
An alternative mod that does the same thing is on the* Nexus now; you no longer need to pirate anything. Just download that.
Yes, it already exists on Nexus, and without ReShade, but it is currently crashing the game a lot for users.
The DLSS3 mod runs via ReShade. I don't mind people charging for their work, but this guy is selling access to an Nvidia dll via an open source tool, which I am not a fan of. Not a lot of original work, just repackaging.
I'm talking about the DLSS3 mod with Frame Generation that is free on Nexus and doesn't rely on ReShade. It was created by another person.
Personally I find it hard to care as I won't be playing the game for longer then a month anyhow. That said, real easy to wait for someone else to drop a dlss3 mod or just go without.
Okay but Martys RTGI is great and works in quite alot of games without much tinkering (just need to access depth buffer), don't mind paying for it. Useally sub and let it expire once every few years.
“I don’t mind buying my own painting and then paying monthly for it to have some details filled in that eventually get painted over anyway at some rate”
Is it morally wrong to have someone spy on the detail painter and copy their techniques? (In this metaphor techniques are DLSS implementation, not the paint (DLSS itself))
To be fair to Starfield, if you're playing on the recommended hardware it runs incredibly well. I'm running a 7900xt and a Ryzen 7600X and the lowest fps I have with everything on ultra at 1440p is 80, don't need any mods.
Edit: also Diablo 4 sucks because they turned it into another MMO with a battlepass that nobody wanted.
Diablo 4 technically flawless? The game barely works to this day. Just check the patch notes of how many abilities weren't working. It's still awesome but lol
Jedi survivor and Baldur's gate 3 are in very different genres. Performance issues in a turn based game is way more forgivable imo
BG3 one is so true. The game is clunky and finicky as hell. Everyone praising it as being polished breaks my brain.
I got it on PS5 (co-op) and in the space of 2 hours had randomly silent cutscenes, an invisible character in one, and my PSN Name and a mute icon permanently stuck the top left of the screen where all the information about rolls and characters liking or disliking things should appear.
Didn't get any tutorials either, which is apparently a thing. So we're just randomly pressing things and hoping it doesn't fuck up the story for later.
It's really quite broken in places.
The game rules here are actually very different. I play a ton of 5e D&D and it's close enough to be useful but different enough to trip me up. S great example I just found out last night after over 80 hours of play as a Paladin: the smite spells last 10 turns and apply to each attack. In 5e the smite spells only affect one attack and are usually worse than divine smite (which isn't a spell be uses a spell slot) because divine smite you decide to use when you hit so it never wastes a spell slot while the others can miss.
I would copy it but the fucking D&D Beyond app prevents copying. The smite spells in 5e say "on the next hit" basically. A lot of spells in BG3 have simplified descriptions and it's hard to know when it is different language or a different effect.
Inventory is clunky as fuck. When I Ctrl click multiple items and pick up and add to wares nearly 100% of the time it fails on the first and I have to do it a second time. Dragging items to other characters when inventories are filtered will actually swap with the item that would be in that slot of their pack without the filter rather than the one showing. Opening containers (especially the ones that need an item inserted like puzzles) get covered by the main inventory and I have to drag them over. Everything with moving items around just feels slow as hell in general. I can't manage characters' inventory unless they're in the party so I have to go through the dialogue to kick someone out then let someone join which isn't all that long but can add up when they're on opposite sides of camp and you realize you forgot something. The search is nice but why not let us search camp inventory too, that's where most of my crap is. Items in containers in your inventory can help with clutter but they aren't added to the hot bar automatically.
Last night I had two enemies spasm out of existence. One of them was so glitched that the game crashed when I killed them. I've had multiple enemies just sit as round for nearly ten seconds or more trying to decide what to do before they do it sometimes even at the end of their turn. When dealing with elevation in battles it is absolutely awful to try and target shit above you, there's no way to have the camera "move up a floor", you can sort of get around this by selecting an enemy on that floor but it's tricky. Trying to do anything precise in combat is a pain. There's no easy way to get you character to jump the maximum distance without moving first for example. Also it's an annoying choice to make jumping take movement like 5e but also take a bonus action like D&D One, it should be one or the other, not both. There's no easy way to save 10 ft of movement at the end, you'll move 20 ft only to realize you have 9.9 ft of movement left and don't have 10 ft for the jump.
There's no way to demo what a dye will look like before using it. There's no way to know if an item it's dyed and with what. There's no way to add wares to the barter screen (which is what the name wares seems to imply to me), only on the trade screen.
I've had a few dialogues that were confusing and seemed to rely on events that didn't happen. Astarion told me he was a vampire then later but me but still acted like it was a big reveal moment. When clearing out the Githyanki creche multiple characters said something about how it's a good thing we didn't nuke them or something? That was never an option I saw. No idea what they're talking about.
Characters will willfully walk into things that damage them including spotted traps and AOE spells from the battle they were in rather than walk around them. This is not in turn based mode, this is real time. When in real time why not just walk around it rather than mindlessly walk towards the player? Even if you want to blame me for the traps saying I should be in turn based mode (which is silly because they know the trap is there, it is spotted) when a battle ends with an AOE damage effect still on the field they automatically enter turn based mode and walk to me through it and take damage.
I've had times where I told them to walk somewhere only for the game to say I can't get there so I have to figure out a tricky jump. Then everyone will walk around some nearby path and get to me without doing a jump at all.
Lit areas around characters die to weapons or spells do not show up with the clear outline that stationary lights have when in stealth mode.
This is all shit just off the top of my head. I'm fully aware a lot of it is minor. I'm fully aware a lot of it can be somewhat avoided or dealt with. It just frustrates me to no end to see people defending this game as if their baby is being attacked. Here's the thing: I love this game! I've been enjoying it a lot! But that doesn't mean it doesn't have bugs. It doesn't mean it is above criticism. A game can be a great game and still have flaws. It just irks me to no end to see how so many of the reviews of the game call it polished when it's just not. Especially when the context of a lot of the reviews are spinning a narrative that this game should set a new standard that triple A studios have failed to meet. This feels like every Bethesda game (pre Fallout 76) did on launch: a ton of promise and a lot of fun but very rough around the edges. And I don't appreciate it when fans of the game mock and victim blame me for problems in the game.
Not OP, and I've been loving the game, but it does have some jank. Pretty early in act 1 I came across a bugged quest which I couldn't complete. Couple the occasional bugs with my inexperience never playing a game like this before and a somewhat unintuitive interface/help system, and it made for a pretty clunky onboarding experience. Now that I've more got the hang of things it feels better. But I needed to look for help outside of the game to really get a handle on it.
I've never finded bugs (Just the horny npcs One) that's probably me being lucky. I do agree that without knowledge of a tabletop gdr or at least of other Classic RPG it's pretty hard do get inside the mechanics. A Better tutorial Is probabily needed but still you can inspect every Word using "T" on the keyboard and read the rules
Yeah, once I figured out how the inspect menu worked, I started learning much faster. I feel a little dumb regarding that. When I first tried it, I just saw that it made the tooltip stick on the screen, I didn't realize I could hover over the text for more information. So I just went "huh, that's dumb" and barely used it again until I saw someone online do it lol.
And for what it's worth, other than the quest bug, the rest of it is mostly just me feeling out the game, which I'm fine with and had fun with, just did a lot of save scumming. I've played MMOs so the interfaces and whatnot aren't completely unfamiliar, but before this game I was only vaguely aware of how tabletop RPGs work
When he goes into battle he stands there waiting for his turn to attack, only to not realise you have to control your companions aswel
Ghost of Tsushima: narrative masterpiece, evokes the sensibilities of a time and place, despite (very) infrequent frame stuttering--particularly if there are large crowds. F-
What do you mean you don’t wanna pay for shit I didn’t pay for either, and do so on a monthly basis??
I should be allowed to freely profit off someone else’s work because I put some amount of personally chosen free time into my modifications and therefor should have power over the consumer and the original producer!!
Oink Oink!
Out of this whole thing, I just want to say something about this.
Some players' reactions to the paywall have been unfavorable; they think that charging for mods is unethical and goes against the spirit of community modification
Everyone needs to make bread. Someone asking for money from their mod or map or whatever isn’t against any spirit. It’s just a human being asking to make bread. Now some don’t agree with the price tag and that’s fine.
But we all need to recognize humans asking for some dough for their hard work is in the spirit of existing. Some folk do it for free just for the feelings and we love ‘em for it. But those asking for some cash are no different.
This world is already full of dog eat dog. Let’s not hate on someone just trying to get through it. You don’t have to pay the ask, but let’s not go making enemies just cause we don’t agree on that number on the price tag.
I am not disagreeing with the premise that it's fair for someone to be paid for their work. However, during the Skyrim paid mod controversy (on Steam), I learned that there a lot of situations where having paid mods did hurt the modding community and created ethical concerns.
I would also point out that it wasn't just greedy players that complained about paid mods - a lot of modders thought it went against the spirit of modding because of how it harmed collaboration in the community. Suddenly, they couldn't trust that others would not steal their work or profit from it unfairly. And, that seems like a reasonable take to me, given all the abuses that modders claimed happened in the short time that paid modding was a thing for Skyrim on Steam.
It feels like the issue is that it was offering the convenience of payment to mods, but not really thinking about the necessary friction of assuring licenses/legality/etc. All of that CAN, of course, be an issue for cheap Unity games too. I remember back when Steam Greenlight started, they required each game to donate $100 to charity to even be considered, basically placing a bet of assurance that it wasn't a stolen asset flip (I don't know if they still do that).
I think you're exactly right - it is the combination of money + little oversight that is the big problem. Warframe seems to do a good job with tennogen but they limit it to only cosmetic mods and seem to be pretty restrictive about what they accept into their store. I don't see how you could have good oversight for a game with as many mods as something like Skyrim has.
It's not "oversight", but if a modder needs to create their own storefront and Paypal integration, and advertising through word of mouth and their own social contacts (as in this case it seems), then that's going to offer a lot more scrutiny than a low-effort asset flipper presenting themselves anonymously through Steam's given storefront.
I remember that discourse and am going to call shenanigans. None of that was new and a lot applies to actual software development
I am not saying any of these aren't issues and I do think that adding monetized mods a decade in to the life cycle of a game was a mistake. But, like with most things, if The People are suddenly fixated on and caring about something they had outright mocked a few weeks prior... they still don't care. They just see a way to be morally righteous while they get what they want.
You don't go into modding for the money. It's like making a non profit for the money. That's why they're getting backlash, they're asking money where money's not supposed to be involved.
it's like theyre making a non profit for the money, except the without the making a non profit part
This is such a shitty attitude 🤣
God forbid we pay for a fucking cup of coffee because that person should want to work for free. This is the same bullshit as "work hard play hard" and "we are family here". Might as well start telling modders it's not about the pay, it's the people and experience we're paying you in. Rent what's that?
You are all on a lemmy instance after 2 months of non stop bitching about non paid reddit moderators. Make up your damn mind.
Yes, again you don't mod for the money. If you're looking for that, you can create your own software. Other people in this thread made other good points, and this guy was trying to make a dlss mod subscription based, so fuck that guy. It's literally better if the mod doesn't exist in that case. Like I said with my analogy, it's like trying to create a non-profit for the profit. There's a million other avenues available to them if they want money. Especially because they are basing their work off of other's work whom are not getting paid, yet they are?
Also idk what you're talking about with the mod stuff but I do think it's dumb internet janitors do work for free lol, and they do it for power. I don't think they should be paid either.
The history of monetization and mods is a pretty complex one.
Back in the UT/Quake 3 era, it was not at all uncommon to pay someone to make a skin or model for you. Those would be put online "for free", but the Influencers of the era (clan folk and prolific forum posters) would get the warm and fuzzies from knowing there was a 420_JustBlazeIt_696969 skin for the nali warcow.
The first time I can really think of there being actual premium content you had to pay for was Neverwinter Nights and, to a lesser extent, The Sims. Yeah, there were the titties and fucking mods and the better ones were behind paywalls. But NWN in particular had a few cases where prolific modders might want some cash to give you access to their really cool campaigns. And Atari/Bioware took advantage of that for premium mods (although, I don't think any community mods ever got an official release? I know AL3 or AL4 was supposed to be but ended up getting released for free when the program ended).
But that was arguably the beginning of the end for the golden age of mods. Because a year or two later we had Unreal Tournament 2003/4 and the "Make Something Unreal" contest. Which was a competition held by epic where the best mods in different categories would get huge cash prizes and games like Red Orchestra actually came out of this. And... it almost instantly killed the modding community. Sure we got Chaos UT2k4 and a few others, but basically every large modding effort was part of this contest rather than "for fun".
And... the reality is that the contest and atari's half ass efforts were pointless. Because the reality is that, by the early 2000s, modding was of comparable difficulty to making a game from scratch. And tools kept getting better (UT became The Unreal Engine, if that is not obvious) and between UE and Unity it was a lot easier for people to just make their dream games and sell them rather than make a mod for someone else's game.
The Bethesda games side was a lot more gradual. There wasn't a massive exodus of modders but... the number of quality quest mods for Morrowind versus Oblivion and Skyrim very much shows that the particularly talented folk were off doing other stuff. And a lot of the old hats realize this. A mod list for Morrowind might have been hundreds of quests. A mod list for Skyrim is bugfixes, a few UI/UX fixes, a graphics mod or two, and... that is it. Like, you still get the occasional magnum opus. But... yeah.
So you get this push back over the idea of modding "dying" even more. Because people aren't going to put in hundreds of hours of work to give something away when they can do the same work and get paid for it. But... that also means they aren't putting in 10 hours of work to make a hilariously bad map that simulates what it is like to have Comcast internet.
And then you just have the children who throw a temper tantrum the moment they are deprived of something they want.
a mod list for Skyrim is bugfixes, a few UI/UX fixes, a graphics mod or two, and... that is it.
You're fucking with us, right? RIGHT?? 😂
Wtf are you talking about, Skyrim has dozens of amazing quest mods, and hundreds of quest mods overall.
It has major gameplay overhauls, it has custom skeletons for animation, it literally has mods that rework the animation system entirely. Modders added a survival system almost a full decade before Bethesda did.
There are mods that add new continents ffs, what’re you talking about? One of the quest mods was so good it literally got turned into its own game.
Edit: There are currently 60k mods for Skyrim Special Edition, and about 70k for the original Skyrim. Meanwhile Morrowind has 11k. Wtf are you talking about??
they are likely referring to The Forgotten City. Which is more than a bit more complicated than "one of the quest mods was so good it literally got turned into its own game" but is close enough to not matter. I enjoyed it but it also felt very reminiscent of the MSU mods that became full games (Helldorado? The shitty steampunk third person shooter with demons). Just with the added benefit of being artistic and a critical darling. If people weren't huge on Outer Worlds for not feeling enough like Skyrim, they aren't going to be a fan of The Forgotten City.
A friend referred to it as "an arthouse game" and... she isn't wrong. The people who like it are going to LOVE it. And everyone else is going to say they like it so that people don't judge them for not being a fan.
it is also a case of traditional modding dying out in favor of people just making their own games. But that person seemed confused and angry as is because I didn't consult them before making a generalization so let's cut them some slack.
The Forgotten City has “overwhelmingly positive” reviews on Steam with many people praising it for its Bethesda-like systems, so I’m not sure what you mean. Maybe you felt it wasn’t enough like Skyrim and disliked it for that, but clearly you don’t speak for others.
Also, no other Skyrim quest mod, out of the near 2 thousand quest mods for the game, had a full game built off of them. So while that does happen sometimes (ie Dayz), it’s exceedingly rare and far from some sort of “tradition” as you put it. If anything that was far more common a decade or two ago than it is now. The original Star Wars Battlefront mod was quite a long time ago after all.
And no I’m not mad, I’m just confused as to how you could think Skyrim has only bug fixes, UI, and graphics mods, when in reality it has nearly 7x the amount of mods that Morrowind has and is the primary example of a thriving modding scene. Idk if you just spouted that out without knowing, or what.
Eh, that was close enough to a response rather than a frothing rant that I'll respond.
Plenty of niche games have "overwhelmingly positive" reviews on Steam. Because that is a function of the reviews by those who played it and cared enough to leave a response. Its one of the great things about Steam reviews. I don't have to adjust a metacritic score because space dogfighting games always score 10-20 points lower than Call of Duty because I know the vast majority of people leaving feedback loved Freespace and are vaguely aware Tachyon existed.
But as far as the wider world? It was almost immediately forgotten. It got a lot of great reviews, but not a lot of play. Which is more or less the case for any arthouse movie. I know it can be hard to keep reading after you see something that MAKES YOU SO ANGRY but you should try. People have a tendency to elaborate on points.
As for Skyrim having "7x the amount of mods that Morrowind has". First, that ignores how many quests and mods were lost to time. I genuinely can't remember where we went for Morrowind mods (I want to say a mix of the official forums and back when UESP still had forums? It has literally been decades). But just looking at Nexus is only part of the picture. Hell, I think Nexus came out of Morrowind modding? Or did it only get big with Oblivion?
But also? of course it has more mods. The same way that basically every new game in a franchise SHOULD sell more than the previous one did. The audience for gaming has exploded over the decades.
The website makes me vomit, the citations are weak, and the visualization is just bad. But https://www.visualcapitalist.com/50-years-gaming-history-revenue-stream/ gets the point across and looks roughly correct from figures I have seen given in interviews and the like. And the actual specific numbers matter a lot less (and weren't even recorded in any way that is reliable).
Going off https://www.visualcapitalist.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/history-of-gaming-by-revenue-share-full-size.html so I can see it (and I am specifically citing the URL because I would not be shocked if it was actually different than in the article...), in the year 200 where was approximately 20 billion in PC revenue. And while Morrowind DID have an xbox version... it really didn't.
As of 2020-ish, we are looking at approximately 73B according to "Visual Capitalist" (ugh). So if we assume roughly the same market share were playing TES games in both eras (and it is pretty safe to say that Skyrim is a MUCH more mainstream game than Morrowind was...), we would expect at least a 3.5x increase in the amount of mods. Oh, I am also assuming the same percentage of the userbase were interested in hobbyist game dev (ha) and that the tools have not gotten easier to use (TESEdit or whatever it was called was pure hell back in the day).
So... if we assume all else has remained equal (and ignore all my somewhat mocking points about how they clearly haven't)... Oh, I forgot. Since TES games are basically the only ones with a thriving modding community these days (unless you count roblox and minecraft where monetization is even more standard), let's also not assume that anyone who would have made an NWN mod or a UT mod or a Half-life mod decided to not make any Skyrim mods.
Oh, and revenue is also a horrible metric due to a combination of inflation and increased cost of game development, but it gives a rough idea of the audience size.
Uhm... where was I? Look, I can't even keep a straight face on this. 7x is really not the win you are thinking it is. It should be a LOT higher than that if Skyrim modding really is thriving to the degree things were in the golden age of modding (late 90s, early 00s).
And that isn't a bad thing. Like I said in the first post that set you off: This is just the trend we have seen. When it is literally easier to make a game in Unreal Engine than it is to make a quest mod in Skyrim... what are you going to do? This is why Unreal Tournament 3 flopped so hard. The expectation was that Epic would release a game and modders would run wild with it. Instead, modders were making UE3 games and getting paid. And the same happened with a few other games (arguably Half-Life 2). Neverwinter Nights 2, and CRPGs in general, largely died out for similar reason. People were less interested in paying for a 20 hour campaign that was "okay" if they weren't going to have really cool user generated content waiting for them afterward.
And... I've already pissed off enough people so I won't say anything beyond: How did Dreams do?
This is pretty long response lol so I'll tackle each point individually.
Plenty of niche games have “overwhelmingly positive” reviews on...
Your whole argument on niche games getting good reviews, I actually fully agree with. The problem is that those reviews are literally the only metric we have to discern whether or not the people that played it enjoyed it - anything else is pure speculation. Including your point about people not liking it if they felt it didn't feel enough like Skyrim, or people saying they like it just to appease others. It's frankly bizarre that you'd make an argument for Steam Reviews not 100% showing the accuracy of people's opinions, while simultaneously making statements like those with zero anything to back them up.
At the very least the reviews tell us that people who played it say they liked it. That's just a fact. And considering that that's all we have, I think it's fair to use it. Anything else, again, is just pure speculation.
I know it can be hard to keep reading after you see something that MAKES YOU SO ANGRY but you should try.
This was weird lol.
“7x the amount of mods that Morrowind has”. First, that ignores how many quests and mods were lost to time.
No, it doesn't. Skyrim has over 70k mods while Morrowind has roughly 11k. Even if there were over one hundred missing quest mods for Morrowind, which I doubt, it still wouldn't affect that massive difference.
But also? of course it has more mods. The same way that basically every new game in a franchise SHOULD sell more than the previous one did. The audience for gaming has exploded over the decades.
This... just isn't how modding works. Most new games releasing will have some reshades and a trainer, max. Once in a great while you'll get some nudity. The size of the audience doesn't change that - most games releasing simply don't garner much mod support.
By your logic a game like Call of Duty should have a massive modding scene, as the new entry will be newer and have a massive audience, an audience multiple times bigger than any Bethesda game. But no, that's just not how that works. Hell, even a game like The Witcher 3 only has half the number of mods that Morrowind does.
Also I'm confused as to the point of those links. Are you arguing that gaming has... gotten more popular over the years? Yeah no shit. As I said earlier, numbers going up doesn't magically guarantee a thriving modding scene.
So if we assume roughly the same market share were playing TES games in both eras (and it is pretty safe to say that Skyrim is a MUCH more mainstream game than Morrowind was…), we would expect at least a 3.5x increase in the amount of mods.
As I went over before, no. Lol absolutely not. I don't believe that you actually think this could possibly be true. Lets apply your logic to other mainstream games releasing nowadays and see if that logic holds water (hint, it doesn't).
This comment was truly a trip, thank you.
Remember, the patreon sub is $5/MONTH. This means if you buy 1 month at $5 to download the mod, and the author "conveniently" comes out with an update one month later, you need to subscibe for another $5. So basically it's a fucking subscription for a god damn dlss 3 mod. You know the author is milking this bullshit to keep subscibers and keep his income flowing. Marty mcfly does the same fucking dogshit with his stupid ass RTGI reshade shaders. Fuck that shit. Those people can go get fucked.
If you want to charge $5 or $10 for your time spent making the mod, fine, whatever. But if you are trying to make it a subscription model then I have ZERO sympathy for you.
Ultimately, the guy is being upfront with his pricing and what he's asking for. What's the reason to hate on him? Either it's worth it at that price or it's not.
So you're invalidating the feeling of being upset when something that used to be free (modding games) is no longer free. Modding has always been a free hobby that was run by good-willed pc gamers. Now monetization is fragmenting and ruining the modding experience.
You're also justifying paying a subsciption on top of a fucking $70 game. Do you rip up a $5 bill every time you take a shit? Try it out. You may enjoy it.
No, I'd just choose not to use it and move on. Or if I'm broke and really wanted it, sure, pirate it. Not act like an entitled brat and whine and moan and it
You must be one of those whales that buys $4k worth of micro transactions. You do you man.
they cant invalidate the feeling of being upset when something that used to be free (modding games) is no longer free
modding games is still free, so your feeling of being upset wasnt valid in the first place
The reason why he charges does not matter at all. Anyone wanting a service for free is not in the position to demand anything. Would it be nice to get stuff for free? Sure! But demanding free service and badmouthing if you don't get it? Fuck off.
The game has just launched and the mod had been released and cracked already. This isn't about making bread, it's clearly a trivial hack for him to do, not something that requires full time job maintenence.
People spend hundreds of hours modding free of charge, what he does is a joke in comparison if we are talking about lost time that could have been spent earning money. The groundwork was made by Bethesda, AMD and Nvidia.
For real. You want it for free? Cool go ahead and make the mod yourself. All the tools are there. Wait, you don't want to spend your time learning to code? You don't want to spend your time learning modding tools. Our time is our most finite resource and you get mad when someone asks for something in return for theirs? People are just up their own asses.
Dude can charge whatever he wants, and you can choose to buy it or not. Super weird and annoying responses here.
Oh man, I saw a 2,000 word rant about it on Reddit. Just such whining
As if the dude would have bothered to do it for free? Likely not.
Pay, or don't, and then reevaluate all the things you do for free and if you have room to stand
It's a 1 time $5 fee. People are just mad that they're broke after buying a 4090. Frustrations should be aimed at Nvidia, not this one dude trying to make a buck
If you can't afford a 5 dollar mod after dropping 5k on gear, you shouldn't be buying the gear my man lol
This reminds me of the McFly ray tracing plugin for ReShade - turns out somebody else has already made an open-source alternative
Well he managed to snag a sponsorship from Nvidia thanks to his shenanigans. Which probably says more about Nvidia than about the guy, to be honest.
I don't have a problem with some mods being sold. My issue is when you price it initially for free and THEN decide later to charge money for it. That's within your rights of course, but don't expect people to not get pissed off enough to pirate it.
Okay is gamescensor written by actual people, or just some generative learning SEO site? Because wow this is a mess of an article.
The mod replaces the FSR2 upscaling technology included in the game (which is made for AMD graphics cards)
FSR2 works on every major graphics card
a more modern upscaler that is compatible with more recent Nvidia cards.
Wat?
PureDark, who claimed to make more than $40,000
Nope some one else extrapolated that data from a patreon page.
It may be because AMD is "Starfield's exclusive PC partner" and only supports FSR2 technology at launch that the game only does so.
Wat again?!?
I understand when massive, dlc sized mods are monetized. Not when small ones are.
For example in minecraft, there was a mod with which you could pregenerate your world before making it. The creator decided to gut it and put all the good features behind his patreon.
I mean at the end of the day its the decision of the developer who put time in it.. if you're not happy with that look for another mod or code your own.
Sure I appreciate free mods but we shouldn't take them for granted.
ITT: A gross misunderstanding about how mod and DLSS/RTX licencing works.
Folks act like modding is a constitutional right and not expressly allowed within TOS. Guys of Bethesda wanted to go full on piss on the community they could shut all of it MPAA style. They choose to let modders use and monitize their assets because it's less expensive and harmful then attacking everyone e.g Nintendo. https://documents.bethesda.net/en/terms-of-service
RTX is fully redistributable without modification as long as it's used on Nvidia hardware.
They choose to do that because the community caries their games. I wouldn't own a single beth game if they didn't have mod support.
And? I'm just informing everyone bitching about the legal issues who lack a fundamental understanding of the aforementioned documents.
ITT: Bitching “the old ways were better” user clearly doesn’t understand the hipocricy of charging for mods when devs didn’t pay for access themselves.
What you get to be the only person who profits? Not the companies who made the rest of the fucking game so you can copy and paste some fucking stackoverflow implementation posts?
Dev needs to get real - enjoy that bite in your ass. Fees for thee but not for me
This isn’t anything new, there’s some community software locked behind paywalls like patreon already. Doesn’t mean we have to like it though.
Then again, DLSS is an nvidia product, so there’s a legal issue here I think.
DLSS is free to redistribute. https://developer.nvidia.com/downloads/nvidia-rtx-sdks-license-23jan2023pdf#:~:text=Further%2C%20the%20DLSS%20SDK%20and,DLSS%20SDK%20and%20NGX%20SDK.
Unless they go crazy like oracle/Java devs are encouraged to use it.
Nah it’s free to use tech, but yes the dev is indeed still charging for something that they themselves could have to pay for but don’t.
Only the mod dev gets to make money, not any of the hundreds of people (if not more) working on the base game.
Come on man it’s fine, charge the little guy, big guy make more money. It’s simple /s
How to say you know nothing about game development without saying you know nothing about game (software) development. But want to assert your opinion on it regardless.
It's corporate profiteering not lazy devs. The devs work their asses off, these aren't their decisions to make.
It's like blaming the guy finishing the drywall for design problems with the building. Lazy drywallers, ruining a good office tower, it wouldn't be leaning if they weren't so lazy.
The more people defend the lazy game devs, the more crappy half finished games we will get. The reason people need to seek out upscaling at all for Starfield is because the game isn't optimized. Lazy design.
Or bad resource allocation by the management. If they cut performance development in favour of marketing what a developer can do?
I like that you are so unwilling to learn that you associate an explanation of a field you know nothing about as "defending"
😂😂
Imagine putting a mod that the devs of the game it's for can take down at any moment if they feel like it.
Imagine being dumb enough to pay for it as well!
PureDark, who claimed to make more than $40,000 per month from locking DLSS3 mods behind their Patreon page,
Make that 50k, his current patreon page shows over 10k members. There's stuff for several games there, tho, like RDR2, Last of Us 2, Elden Ring, Fallout 4, etc.
Seems there's plenty of space for competitors to enter the "offer DLSS mods for games that don't have it"
If I was earning that much per month, I wouldn't worry about taking extra time to add DRM to my stuff. Despite the cracked version floating around, he got more subscribers since the first stories came around and he's at zero risk of suffering any significant loss. Pirate that shit with a clean conscience
Just use one of the 6 other DLSS bridge mods kekw.
Puredarks mods been working since day 1 for me. No issues, even with reshade.
PureDark is the modder they're referring to. The DLSS 2 version of their mod is free, the DLSS 3 version is not.
Ah fair enough, for some reason i read a different mod submitters name. Ty for the clarification!
... supports DLSS3, a more modern upscaler that is compatible with more recent Nvidia cards.
Gotta love errors in tech articles.
yeah i don’t see the error. DLSS3 is newer and supported by the newer cards. older cards can’t run DLSS3
The error is calling it an upscaler, Frame Generation is interpolation.
There's also the fact that Nvidia completely changed their naming scheme, so technically DLSS 3.0 is compatible with all RTX cards. DLSS Frame Generation (previously called 3.0) is restricted to the newer hardware.
Isn’t frame generation dependent on upscaling?
Maybe I misunderstood them but the Digital Foundry guys were just making this point in regards to FSR 3, which is also a frame generation technology. They were saying that you also need to implement FSR 2, as the upscale techniques were used to drive the frame generation. Might not be the same for the Nvidia side of things.
The inputs are mostly the same, so implementing one essentially implements the other. Much like how implementing fsr2 is so similar to dlss and xess. (Which is why these mods came out in a matter of hours after early release)
DF was referring to a question about devs patching old games to add in fsr3 frame gen, as if its some simple toggle for games which may not even have motion vector or optical flow data already exposed.
Thats more due to Nvidia making both Frame Generation, Upscaling and the original use, Anti Aliasing (the SS in DLSS is super sampling) the same term.
Realistically, DLSS should be referred to as an anti aliasing technique(like TAA is) but it was basically colloquially hijacked to turn into an upscaling tech.
Nvidia already brands the AA different. DLAA is anti-aliasing without upscaling. DLSS is upscaling, AA, frame-generation, and soon also RT denoising.
The problem is DLSS should be the AA (as intended) and not the reverse. DLAA should have stayed DLSS and upscaling should have gotten another name.
Thats more due to Nvidia making both Frame Generation, Upscaling and the original use, Anti Aliasing (the SS in DLSS is super sampling) the same term.
Realistically, DLSS should be referred to as an anti aliasing technique(like TAA is) but it was basically colloquially hijacked to turn into an upscaling tech.
Sure modders can put stuff behind paywalls, but implementing DRM, is overkill. And it would be nice if they release month old versions for free afterwards.. sSo I have to see, Starfield isn't that old yet.
BTW, I am not really getting the FSR/DLSS situation.
Shouldn't FSR2 be working on Nvidia gpus as well and is open source? DLSS is propritary and only works on Nvidia.
So I am not really understanding the issue here, other than customers of Nvidia not having FSR2 because Nvidia hasn't implemented the open standard, right? So they should complain to them about it.
IMO this is a bit like the fediverse vs. other social media topic, so I would complain about people creating their own propritary stuff, that is intentionally incompatible with the fediverse, and not about people that use the fediverse API in their app, but not support some propritary API.
I think the mod is simply a better implementation of DLSS and one that possibly even works on non-nvidia or non-dlss supported GPUs. IDK, I saw it the other day on Nexus but didn't get it because FSR works just fine 🤷🏻♂️
What are you talking about? The mod adds dlss frame generation into the game, which only runs on nvidia 40xx gpus.
Most people think DLSS is a better upscaler than FSR so that's why people wanted DLSS support, but it only works on Nvidia RTX GPUs, while FSR will work on both Nvidia and AMD GPUs. Downside is FSR apparently isn't as good as DLSS but I can't confirm that as I have an AMD GPU.
My GPU is Nvidia (1660 Super), but doesn't support DLSS or doesn't support the latest iteration of it, I am not entirely sure. I, personally, try to avoid using upscalers and just want the native resolution. This is the only game I have taken advantage of the upscaling for more than just comparison, because it's almost unplayable without it since the GPU I have is technically below the minimum requirement. My sister has a newer RTX card so I can compare DLSS between FSR, and I can't even really tell much difference. They're both blurrier than native, but it's more noticable on a monitor than a TV.
Yeah anything with a GTX prefix like your 1660S doesn't support DLSS, only the RTX 2000 and up works. I agree completely, I've never used upscaling before as I'd much rather have a clearer picture at native resolution, but if I wanna stay above 30FPS minimums then I need to use FSR with my RX 6700XT running at 1440p. Didn't think I'd play any games that made my GPU feel that bad for at least another year or two.
As someone who's been subbed to Puredark for months for his various dlss+fg mods, it makes a big difference!
