Monday, January 9th 2023
MSI Afterburner Developer Hasn't been Paid for a Year, Product Development in Limbo
MSI Afterburner is arguably the most popular graphics card overclocking utility that everyone from gamers to professional overclockers swear by. It is used across graphics card brands, and helps you tune up both NVIDIA and AMD GPUs. While you enjoy Afterburner with your new-generation GeForce RTX 40-series "Ada" and Radeon RX 7000 series RDNA3 GPUs that were released in 2022, do remember that Afterburner's developer hasn't been paid a penny for it.
MSI Afterburner is developed by Russian national Alexey Nicolaychuk, who goes by the name Unwinder across tech forums. Following the Russian invasion of Ukraine in early-2022, MSI stopped payments to Unwinder citing "political reasons." Unwinder had been independently (read: without payment) supporting Afterburner out of personal interest throughout 2022 in hopes that MSI would figure out a way to pay him. Interestingly, MSI PC hardware continued to be sold in the Russian market throughout 2022. Despite continuing to develop Afterburner throughout 2022 without payment, MSI hasn't resolved its payments. In a community post, Unwinder announced that he is finally calling it quits, and is halting development of the app. This development ensures that the app works reliably with new GPUs as they're being launched, fixes bugs, and patches security issues.
The discontinuation of Afterburner would place the whole graphics card overclocking field in jeopardy. The second most popular app, EVGA Precision X has effectively been discontinued, with the company's exit from the graphics card business; and now the Unwinder-developed Afterburner stares at an uncertain future, too. MSI's reasons for not paying Unwinder are debatable. There are several civilian payment channels to Russia still open. There are also neutral countries like India, which have direct settlement of Russian Rubles without involving US Dollars or SWIFT. MSI India, for example, sells graphics cards for Indian Rupees, and uses Indian banks that can settle Russian Ruble payments to Unwinder on behalf of MSI. Perfectly legal ways to pay Unwinder exist. Unwinder and Afterburner are two precious jewels for the DIY PC enthusiast community, and we hope MSI can sort this out, pay Unwinder his arrears for 2022, and fund continued development of Afterburner.
Update 15:53 UTC: MSI in a statement to Hassan Mujtaba of Wcctech says:
Source:
Unwinder (Guru3D Forums)
MSI Afterburner is developed by Russian national Alexey Nicolaychuk, who goes by the name Unwinder across tech forums. Following the Russian invasion of Ukraine in early-2022, MSI stopped payments to Unwinder citing "political reasons." Unwinder had been independently (read: without payment) supporting Afterburner out of personal interest throughout 2022 in hopes that MSI would figure out a way to pay him. Interestingly, MSI PC hardware continued to be sold in the Russian market throughout 2022. Despite continuing to develop Afterburner throughout 2022 without payment, MSI hasn't resolved its payments. In a community post, Unwinder announced that he is finally calling it quits, and is halting development of the app. This development ensures that the app works reliably with new GPUs as they're being launched, fixes bugs, and patches security issues.
War and politics are the reasons. I didn't mention it in MSI Afterburner development news thread, but the project is semi abandoned by company during quite a long time already. Actually we're approaching one year mark since the day when MSI stopped performing their obligations under Afterburner license agreement due to "politic situation". I tried to continue performing my obligations and worked on the project on my own during the last 11 months, but it resulted in nothing but disappointment; I have a feeling that I'm just beating a dead horse and waste energy on something that is no longer needed by company. Anyway I'll try to continue supporting it myself while I have some free time, but will probably need to drop it and switch to something else, allowing me to pay my bills.MSI Afterburner is an important tool used not just for its overclocking features and monitoring on the app's UI, but the in-game overlay feature (ability to have GPU and other real-time stats overlaid on top of game streams). Discontinuation of Afterburner could potentially affect millions of game streamers that rely on this feature. Unwinder clarified that he will continue to support RivaTuner Statistics Server (RTSS), the backend component that makes Afterburner overlay work.
The discontinuation of Afterburner would place the whole graphics card overclocking field in jeopardy. The second most popular app, EVGA Precision X has effectively been discontinued, with the company's exit from the graphics card business; and now the Unwinder-developed Afterburner stares at an uncertain future, too. MSI's reasons for not paying Unwinder are debatable. There are several civilian payment channels to Russia still open. There are also neutral countries like India, which have direct settlement of Russian Rubles without involving US Dollars or SWIFT. MSI India, for example, sells graphics cards for Indian Rupees, and uses Indian banks that can settle Russian Ruble payments to Unwinder on behalf of MSI. Perfectly legal ways to pay Unwinder exist. Unwinder and Afterburner are two precious jewels for the DIY PC enthusiast community, and we hope MSI can sort this out, pay Unwinder his arrears for 2022, and fund continued development of Afterburner.
Update 15:53 UTC: MSI in a statement to Hassan Mujtaba of Wcctech says:
Our product marketing & accounting team are dealing with this problem now. Due to the war, our payment couldn't transfer to the author's bank account successfully. We are still keeping in touch with him and figuring out how to solve thisWe will be periodically checking with Unwinder on whether he has been paid.
136 Comments on MSI Afterburner Developer Hasn't been Paid for a Year, Product Development in Limbo
For me, Afterburner is less about overclocking and more about undervolting. There are a lot of overclocking tools out there for Nvidia cards, but there's little or no option when it comes to easy undervolting.
And if I were him, I'd give them a deadline, then remove their name and anything belonging to MSi, then relaunch it, release it as open source, call it GFX Afterburner, make the IT press, like this site announce it, and ask for public donations for support, and pray his country comes to its senses, so normal business can resume.
The fact that MSI could pay this developer in other ways, but chooses not to is secondary, the point is that Putin's war caused this issue. MSI may well have good reasons to severe all ties with someone based in Russia that they don't wanna say.
I'm surmising here, but it could be that they don't trust anyone from Russia not to add malware to the product in case they've been leaned on by the Kremlin. That's millions of computers that could potentially be infected if that happens and they don't wanna be responsible for it.
He needs to get out - there is another mass mobilization coming very soon.
One way or another, this wouldn't have happened if Putin hadn't started this insane war, that's the important part.
Fwiw, I don't even like MSI. I just don't like companies taking flak just because.
"Business bad? F you, pay me"
"Oh, you had a fire? F you, pay me"
"Place got hit by lightning ? F you, pay me”
"The commies declared war on Ukraine, F you, pay me"
Pss... I added that last one just to make a point :D
Who knows, maybe the fix will come from Mr Putin himself. It's expected he will try to bring another half-million people to arms, maybe this prompts Unwinder to set up camp elsewhere.