they aren't a mistake and this is a big misconception the games never run at native before that. the native is a lie. it is fake as much as xess, dlss and fsr is.
from onwards 2016, most games rely "temporal accumulation". they use "temporal anti aliasing". this is the critical part. developers rely on temporal to accumulate to... UNDERSAMPLE effects. such as resolution that trees are rendered. resolution that shadows are rendered. hey, you can be at full native 1440p SHADER resolution and the oh so Digital foundry counts 1440p. but oh, you render your shadows at 1/8 of the screen resolution! and they only lookt "coherent" with temporal accumulation. oh your trees are at 1/64 of the screen resolution. and they look MUDDY and shit (like what happens with rdr2 if you play it at 1440p/1080p). but native is native, right?????
NATIVE was NEVER native with modern games that already heavily RELIED on temporal accumulation. only thing that is native about them is the "shader" resolution which only pops up if you count pixels. if you look at things at a closer level, you will see that more than half the effects you see are being rendered at 1/2 resolution and made coherent and made full with temporal accumulation. and guess what happens then? what happens if you "temporally" accumulate 1/2 resolution worth of shadows into full resolution? you guessed, they appear smudgy, blurry and garbage unless you play at "4K". this is why most modern taa games suck at 1080p and 1440p "NATIVE" because so many effects are being rendered at poor low resolutions.
this is why I chuckle whenever I see someone proudly saying "I play at native!" as if native have any meaning or whatsoever with modern implementation of temporal accumulation. yeah good luck playing RDR2 at so called "native 1080p". the game clearly looks like 540p THE SECOND you move your camera. trees are rendered at abnormally bad low resolutions, foliage also. quite literally the entire game is in shambles once you disable TAA. like, almost half of the game is never rendered. THE GAME LITERALLY RENDERS 540p worth of rendering all the time, but just tells you that it has a 1080p shader resolution. THAT's it.
the SECOND you move the camera, illusion breaks, temporal accumulation breaks and everything appears like it should: 540P. the game literally loses %50 worth of resolution once you move the camera. YET ! YOU WILL BE PROUD. YOU WILL BE PROUD THAT YOU PLAYED AT THE MYTHIC NATIVE RESOLUTİON. oh SO NATIVE. looks SO GOOD!
I've had enough of this bullshit.