Dave Oshry has a question for the games industry: if AI is going to fundamentally redesign how a game looks after artists spend years crafting it, what exactly is the point of making game art at all?
The New Blood Interactive CEO has gone public with a call to action aimed at both developers and players, urging a coordinated boycott of Nvidia's DLSS 5 technology. His argument, made in comments to PC Gamer and then posted in full to Bluesky, is that DLSS 5 isn't a performance tool anymore. It's generative AI wearing a familiar brand name as a disguise.
The branding problem Oshry won't let slide
"Please tell me what generative AI has anything to do with Deep Learning Super Sampling, which is what DLSS actually stands for in case anyone forgot," Oshry said. His core accusation is that Nvidia is sheltering generative AI under the DLSS banner specifically because the backlash to a product called something like "Nvidia Generative Upscaling" would be immediate. The name is doing heavy lifting, and Oshry thinks that's intentional.
Here's the thing: he's not entirely wrong about how the framing works. DLSS built its reputation on being a performance multiplier that didn't visibly compromise image quality. DLSS 5 is a different proposition entirely, using generative AI to synthesize frames and alter the visual output of games in ways the original artists never signed off on.
Dusk developer David Szymanski backed Oshry's position, adding that the tech "fundamentally changes the way video games look based on artificial intelligence that's been trained on Instagram models." Szymanski's specific concern is that even setting aside the broader generative AI debate, DLSS 5 actively makes scenes look less realistic by altering lighting and contrast in ways that reduce believability rather than enhance it.
From optional feature to industry default
Szymanski also flagged something players who've lived through the last five years of AAA releases will recognize immediately: "optional" features have a habit of becoming mandatory in practice. Games get built around technologies like temporal anti-aliasing and ray tracing to the point where disabling them makes the experience noticeably worse. He's warning that DLSS 5 is on the same trajectory.
danger
DLSS 5 has not launched yet. Nvidia has confirmed it is coming later in 2026, meaning developers still have time to decide whether to integrate it before it ships to consumers.
The initial reveal of DLSS 5 used footage from Bethesda and Capcom titles, which drew significant public criticism. Both studios now find themselves associated with a technology that has become genuinely controversial, and neither has publicly doubled down on support since the backlash hit.
Oshry's full boycott statement
What Oshry actually wants to happen
The ask is blunt. According to the PC Gamer interview and developer blog, Oshry wants developers to stop collaborating with Nvidia on DLSS 5 integration, and he wants players to vote with their wallets. "Cripple their sales, tank their stock price," he said. "Then maybe they'll think about going back to giving us what we want."
The pair also discussed Nvidia's broader track record with technologies like PhysX and path tracing. Their view is that many of Nvidia's previous showcase features did represent genuine long-term advancements, but always at a cost to clarity, accessibility, and playability for games that leaned on them too heavily. DLSS 5, in their reading, takes that trade-off to a new level by removing artistic control from the equation entirely.
The full back-and-forth, as reported by Rock Paper Shotgun, captures a frustration that's been building across the developer community since Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang began publicly defending DLSS 5 against critics. Whether enough studios share Oshry's willingness to say it this loudly is the question that will define how DLSS 5 actually lands when it ships later this year. Make sure to check out more:
