Update: Gearbox Publishing representatives reached out to TheGamer and confirmed that there is no timed exclusivity on ray tracing in Godfall. The studio is currently in the process of finalizing the implementation of ray tracing with Nvidia.
Original story: Today, Godfall gets a teeny tiny update on PC. Update 2.0.95 does one thing and one thing only: adds ray tracing support. But it only adds ray tracing for AMD GPUs, leaving Nvidia owners out in the cold.
So what’s with Godfall shunning Nvidia on PC? Well, it likely has to do with AMD’s partnership with Godfall creators Counterplay Games. As a result of that partnership, Godfall was created specifically with AMD software and hardware in mind. That also meant that Godfall would be optimized for the PS5, which uses AMD’s RNDA2 graphics architecture.
That’s not to say that Godfall doesn’t work on Nvidia cards. It’s just not quite as pretty.
What’s notable is that this appears to be the first instance of a PC technical feature becoming a timed exclusive. We’re used to platform exclusives (of which Godfall is timed to stay on the Epic Games Store for 12 months), but we haven’t heard of ray tracing only working on one particular brand of PC hardware over another.
Counterplay does say in their patch notes that Godfall will eventually receive ray tracing support for Nvidia cards, but they don’t say when. They also don’t say when Godfall will receive DLSS support, the feature that allows Nvidia cards to display ultra-high def graphics without adding nearly as much GPU memory as AMD cards.
With this update, Godfall on PC might just be the best way to experience the game. In his review, Kirk noted that the PS5 version of Godfall suffers from slowdown in high fidelity mode, which is a problem that might not exist if you've got a truly high-end PC.
On the other hand, Kirk was fairly lukewarm to the idea of paying $70 for a game that’s essentially a shallower version of Warframe, especially when you can play Warframe for free. And with Warframe getting a next-gen upgrade anyway, there just doesn’t seem to be enough of a draw to justify Godfall’s next-gen price tag.
Source: Counterplay Games