Wednesday, December 12th 2018
Razer Wants to Mine Crypto on Your PC in Return for Loyalty Rewards
In a move that made us go "WTF" internally, Razer has decided to test their fanbase's loyalty more so than ever before. Today, the company introduced Razer Softminer, a mining software program that is intended to be installed on computers and run to mine cryptocurrency. But instead of the users getting whatever new cryptocurrency is in fashion, Razer instead wants to retain all mined crypto and in turn "award" users with the so-called Razer Silver- loyalty reward credits, in their own words. The miner appears to be running off a version of the Gamma desktop application, as per speculation from TweakTown.
Razer Softminer utilizes heavy GPU performance loads, and there is no mention as to what the actual mining is for. It is clear, however, that the users are not mining Razer Silver (which Razer is quick to admit is not cryptocurrency) and these loyalty credits are handed out in an equivalent manner based on the mining power of the system. In their estimate, a sytem with at least a NVIDIA GTX 1050 or AMD RX 460 running the mining program for a whole day will net ~500 Razer Silver, and these can be used to "redeem Razer peripherals, digital rewards such as games, vouchers and more" from a dedicated rewards page.Razer Silver expires after 12 months from the date of earning, which makes this all the worse given the least expensive rewards include small-scale PC games at 21,000 Silver (~40 days of continuous mining for games that can be bought for $10-15 without discounts) and Razer's own products will take a lot, lot longer (over one year in some cases). This reeks of desperation for liquid cash, an unwise move in this time of low cryptocurrency interest and value, and overall little regard to their fans. Hopefully, no one ends up taking up Razer on this until we get more clarification on what the miner does for them, and even then it needs to be a lot more lucrative to interest most people.
Source:
Razer
Razer Softminer utilizes heavy GPU performance loads, and there is no mention as to what the actual mining is for. It is clear, however, that the users are not mining Razer Silver (which Razer is quick to admit is not cryptocurrency) and these loyalty credits are handed out in an equivalent manner based on the mining power of the system. In their estimate, a sytem with at least a NVIDIA GTX 1050 or AMD RX 460 running the mining program for a whole day will net ~500 Razer Silver, and these can be used to "redeem Razer peripherals, digital rewards such as games, vouchers and more" from a dedicated rewards page.Razer Silver expires after 12 months from the date of earning, which makes this all the worse given the least expensive rewards include small-scale PC games at 21,000 Silver (~40 days of continuous mining for games that can be bought for $10-15 without discounts) and Razer's own products will take a lot, lot longer (over one year in some cases). This reeks of desperation for liquid cash, an unwise move in this time of low cryptocurrency interest and value, and overall little regard to their fans. Hopefully, no one ends up taking up Razer on this until we get more clarification on what the miner does for them, and even then it needs to be a lot more lucrative to interest most people.
36 Comments on Razer Wants to Mine Crypto on Your PC in Return for Loyalty Rewards
At least it's not part of their "cloud driver..." yet...
But still say 70% of owners decided yes will the others be forced to as well ?, and if not will the default be on or off as some people might not be aware of this BS.
Well for me never plan to buy another Razer product after having 4 mice and 2 keyboards fail in a pretty short time.
Anyone using this should be banned from using a PC and instantly given a free console. Can't we think up a PEGI rating for that based on IQ?
just want to know if they Sacked the PR dumb ass that proposed this
I still cannot accept that marketing alone can make a company like Razer, a big name in the industry.
I feel that razers lost its way, and is going downhill fast... all about how to make profit, and no interest in protecting their reputation anymore
Except that Apple is making good product and stable environment for their apps (even if I find it too pricey still).
Razer makes also crappy drivers like for the second generation of Naga mouses ...
razer/comments/804umn
Only thing I make use of now from Razer is the Cortex software, and that's only for tracking time played in games for my own OCD needs. It's not the driver that's bad, it's just the hardware - period. I bet if that user from Reddit used the Naga mouse on a clean, white sheet of paper it would track just fine. The sensor on the Naga just, for lack of a better word, blows.
WTH Razer? Get your heads out of your back-sides be less shady. While I didn't see it, I'm guessing it was deleted because it did not meet forum standards. Please review them here;
www.techpowerup.com/forums/threads/forum-guidelines.197329/