DLSS modder PureDark has been featured on news websites ever since he started adding support for DLSS (and other upscalers, occasionally) in PC games that didn’t offer a native implementation, providing performance boosts for gamers.
It all started with the V Rising DLSS and FSR 2.0 mod we covered on Wccftech exactly eleven months ago. At that time, the modder also worked in collaboration with Praydog to introduce upscalers to the Resident Evil 2 remake; later, their work would open up to DLSS being injected into Resident Evil 4 through the RE Framework.
PureDark continued on his own to add FSR, DLSS, and XeSS to Bethesda’s The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim and Fallout 4, though arguably the modder’s breakthrough in popularity happened when NVIDIA released the Frame Generation SDK, allowing programmers to create DLSS 3 mods.
At this point, PureDark started offering the Frame Generation mods to his Patreon subscribers. He released DLSS 3 mods for Skyrim, Fallout 4, Elden Ring, Star Wars Jedi: Survivor, The Last of Us Part I, Red Dead Redemption 2, and, more recently, Baldur’s Gate 3.
However, he rose to a new level of prominence with Starfield’s mod. After Bethesda revealed the game would only support AMD FidelityFX Super Resolution 2.0 at launch, PureDark promised he would add DLSS very quickly. He eventually released the Super Resolution portion (alongside Intel XeSS support) for free, while the DLSS 3 mod remained only available to Patreon subscribers.
However, this specific mod garnered PureDark enough notoriety to spark a debate on whether it was ethical for him to request payment for the modding work. The controversy got even bigger when he decided to add DRM (Digital Rights Management) authentication to the mod, though it was rather quickly cracked.
In an interview published yesterday by IGN, PureDark said he would ‘add mines’ to his next DLSS mods to ensure pirates would be unable to really enjoy them. I’ve since reached out to the modder, who provided a clarification on that statement.
The interview with IGN was conducted more than a week ago, and it was what I said back when I was angry at haters and those who cracked my Starfield mod. I did think about doing that at some point, but then I stopped doing it. It’s been a long time, and I’ve calmed my mind.
Also, I would need to think about a lot of methods just to put hidden detections in the mods. It’s not worth my time. It’s really not worth it to waste my time fighting or getting back to those people. I might as well focus on making new mods and updates.
It doesn’t sound like there’s anything to worry about with regard to those ‘mines’ in PureDark’s future mods, as the modder said he wishes to go silent and focus on making them instead of coming up with creative ways to impede pirates.
By the way, anyone who doesn’t wish to pay for a DLSS 3 mod in Starfield need not resort to piracy, as modder LukeFZ released his own free mod offering the same functionality.
