Can it be that you linked to one of these libraries, but never called any function from that DLL, so your linker dropped the unused DLL dependency?

However, I don't really like that method. The app will fail to launch on computers without nVidia drivers, complaining about the missing DLL. For languages like C++ or Rust, the exported DWORD variable is the best way to go. The only reason I bothered with custom installer actions, that method wasn't available.