That said, the free upscaling mod currently offered on NexusMods only supports the more limited DLSS2 standard, which dates back to 2020. Players who want access to the frame-generation capabilities of DLSS3 in Starfield can subscribe to the Patreon page for modder PureDark, which offers a beta version that supports the more modern upscaling standard on compatible 4000-series Nvidia cards. Those frame-generation capabilities can improve frame rates further by inserting AI-generated frames between those generated by the game itself.
There are plenty of people who are philosophically opposed to the idea of paying for game mods, as evidenced by the strong backlash when Valve tried introducing paid mod support on Steam in 2015 (using Bethesda’s Skyrim as the first test bed at the time). In fact, some of those free-mod-loving gamers have reportedly released a crack for the DRM embedded in the mod itself. That’s right; these days not even mods are safe from the never-ending battle between pirates and developers.
For anyone hoping for a more official (and less morally fraught) way to add DLSS support to Starfield, AMD hasn’t completely ruled it out. In a recent interview with The Verge, AMD Gaming CEO Frank Azor said that “if they [Bethesda] want to do DLSS, they have AMD’s full support… If [our partners] ask us for DLSS support, we always tell them yes.” No public word yet from Bethesda on whether that “if” will become a “when” any time soon.