AMD: Game Devs Use PhysX Only for Cash

Ever since NVIDIA bought out AGEIA for its PhysX engine, the company has been pushing it  as something that should be in all games, as it can greatly increase the game play and fun-factor. But according to AMD’s Senior Manager of Developer Relations, Richard Huddy, most game developers that utilize PhysX don’t want to, but have to. That’s quite a bold statement, to say the least.

Huddy’s exact quote is, “What I’ve seen with physics, or PhysX rather, is that Nvidia create a marketing deal with a title, and then as part of that marketing deal, they have the right to go in and implement PhysX in the game.“. His argument for the most part assumes that all game developers which utilize PhysX are doing so against their will, only because they have to in order to gain financials from NVIDIA.

It’s true that NVIDIA works close with developers which utilize its technologies, but there’s never been proof that the company ever directly pays in order to have PhysX utilized, or other features such as 3D Vision. I have asked NVIDIA over the course of the past couple of years multiple times about its developer relations, and it has always been very ardent in the fact that it does not pay for either PhysX support, an NVIDIA-optimized game, or the “The Way It’s Meant to be Played” branding.

Even this past January, many editors, including myself, were brought into a behind-the-scenes look at how the company deals with game developers, and nothing there lead to this idea at all. I’m certainly not saying there’s no merit to what Huddy is saying, because there’s always two sides to the story, and no company is ever going to tell you what their competitor wants you to hear.

It’s a rather interesting question regardless though, and one I think NVIDIA should be more willing to discuss publicly, rather than continue to have people confused over the entire situation. If NVIDIA gave its clear side of the story, then it would be harder for someone to state the opposite. It will be interesting to see if NVIDIA will respond to this one, or rather, how.

In fact, Huddy reckons that no developers outside Epic genuinely wanted to implement GPU-accelerated PhysX in their game. “I’m not aware of any GPU-accelerated PhysX code which is there because the games developer wanted it with the exception of the Unreal stuff,” he says. “I don’t know of any games company that’s actually said ‘you know what, I really want GPU-accelerated PhysX, I’d like to tie myself to Nvidia and that sounds like a great plan.'”