Nvidia pulled DX10.1 support from PC game Assassin's Creed?

NVIDIA HAS DENIED that it had anything to do with the pulling of DX10.1 support from PC game Assassin's Creed. Honest, guv.

As we previously reported, the upgraded DX10 path ran rather nicely on ATI hardware, giving a decent frame rate boost - even if there was the odd glitch here and there. But with Nvidia's TWIMTBP logo on the back of the box, the inclusion of a DX10.1 path - which most Nvidia hardware doesn't support - was always looking a little controversial.

But Graphzilla has said that it had nothing to do with the removal of the path, that it didn't have any access to the development team to push them to do so, and that no money ever changed hands anyway.

Green Team spokesman Ken Brown told News of the Screws that "We aren't in the business of stifling innovation - it's ludicrous to assume otherwise. Remember that we were the first to bring DirectX 10 hardware to the market and we invested hundreds of millions of dollars on tools, engineers and support for developers in order to get DirectX 10 games out as quickly as possible." Which, we have to point out, isn't exactly an outright denial - since Nvidia has always called 10.1 something of a non-innovation.

Further, Chief Spinster Derez Perez said that "Nvidia never paid for and will not pay for anything with Ubi. That is a completely false claim," when asked how much the TWIMTBP logo on the back of the Assassin's Creed box cost them. Of course, that isn't exactly true either - Nvidia might not pay straight up cash, but it pays quite a lot of dosh to fly engineers down to work with developers on 'correct' code implementation for 3D engines at zero cost to the developer or publisher.

For its part, Ubisoft said in a separate interview that "We are current investigating this situation", which doesn't exactly have the ring of urgency about it - which will surely cheese off ATI 3000-series owners who have had a performance-enhancing feature actively removed from their game.

In the increasingly-heated battle between Nvidia and DAAMIT, gamers are clearly unwitting pawns.