Nvidia's Tough Year Gets Slightly Worse: Indie Game Devs Call For Boycott, Urge Peers To 'Tank' Stock — Here's Why

• “Cripple their sales, tank their stock price. Stop collaborating with them (Nvidia) as developers,” said New Blood Interactive CEO David Szymanski.
• Developers say DLSS 5 acts as an "AI filter" that overwrites a game's original hand-crafted graphics.
• Unveiled at Nvidia’s GTC 2026 conference, DLSS 5 uses generative AI to "reimagine" the lighting, textures, and materials of a game in real-time.

A new AI software from Nvidia aimed at supercharging graphics in video games has sparked backlash from gaming publishers and studios, according to a report in the trade publication PC Gamer.

At its developer conference, Nvidia unveiled DLSS 5 (Deep Learning Super Sampling 5) and hailed it as a "GPT moment for graphics.” However, many creators view it as a threat to artistic integrity.

The primary concern is that DLSS 5 acts as an "AI filter" that overwrites the original hand-crafted graphics of a game, replacing them with a homogenized, AI aesthetic that often looks uncanny or "plastic,” developers say. 

Dave Oshry, the CEO of New Blood Interactive, a prominent, independent video game publisher known for titles such as “Dusk” and “Amid Evil,” had a particularly negative criticism.

Last week, Oshry said in an X post that DLSS 5 is depressing and “even worse is that a whole generation is growing up who won't even know this looks 'bad' or 'wrong' because to them it'll be normal.”

"The only thing we can do besides calling them out on it and making them feel bad is voting with our wallets. Cripple their sales, tank their stock price. Stop collaborating with them as developers. Then maybe they'll think about going back to giving us what we want," according to a later statement posted through New Blood’s X account.

The company argued that the software would fundamentally change the way video games look “based on artificial intelligence that’s been trained on Instagram models and Epstein memes.”

David Szymanski, CEO of Szymanski Games and developer of “Dusk” and “Iron Lung,” told PC Gamer that "nobody wants a ******* glorified autocorrect painting over the work of actual human beings making actual art." 

He argued that even if those concerns were set aside, the lighting and contrast it adds or removes make game scenes look less realistic and believable.

Nvidia’s DLSS 5 uses "neural rendering" technology. Unlike previous versions that primarily focused on making games run faster at higher resolutions, DLSS 5 uses generative AI to "reimagine" the lighting, textures, and materials of a game in real time.

While the tool is seen as a negligible contributor to Nvidia’s earnings, criticism from the gaming industry could still weigh on its public image. Nvidia shares declined 4.2% on Wednesday, amid a broader market selloff linked to the U.S.-Iran war tensions. On Stocktwits, the ticker had a ‘bearish’ retail sentiment reading.

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