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
Unwinder doesn't blame MSI and appears to indeed have at least a decent business relationship with the company. It was mentioned earlier that MSI is looking to implement some kind of solution and workaround.
Yet, people still keep piling on MSI. Do you guys only read the title and come up with the rest of the scenario in your heads?
An example:
Eagle Dynamics that develops Digital Combat Simulator (DCS) flight simulator is a Russian company, and even has a strong connections to Russian military (apart from games they also develop in cooperation with other Russian companies pro simulators for pilot training, battlefield simulators etc). A fact they bragged with for years, and then tried to erase all mentions of it. One of their developers was even imprisioned in USA for smuggling technical manuals of US military aircraft. When they first started having problems with international sanctions (PayPal, other payment problems) they opened "headquartes" in Switzerland. It is forbidden to even mention this in their forums or Facebook pages dedicated to the sim (No political discussions!), and everyone now pretends they're western developers - although a they have in the west is a front.
And they thrive, although all of their devopment is going on in Russia.
Now, it could very well be that it was mainly MSI's fault, but isn't certain because we lack details. Based on what Unwinder wrote in Guru3D thread, he didn't appear particularly proactive in finding a solution either. It sounded like he simply accepted it. That assessment of course could also be wrong but, again, we have very few statements from both parties on the matter, and even less actual details as to what had happened during this period.
We don't know what the communication has been between Unwinder and MSI. We don't know if either side had offered solutions. We don't know, if there had been solutions proposed, why they were rejected by the other side. Etc., etc...
My point is that people jump to conclusions way to easily, and I do find it curious that the "victim" is much more forgiving of the "perpetrator" than some random people online.
Good thing they have a white knight here to protect their honour.
I love MSI's products and if MSI would have had minimum shady stuff and controversy i would be the first to ask for moderation in judgement untill more facts would surface
and would trust this situation not to be MSI's fault, but as the situation stands i'm NOT willing or able to do that.
I admit i'm biased against MSI because of the recent "AMD gets prev gen hardware" crap and i'm also willing to admit that i might be wrong accusing MSI of ill intentions/foulplay,
but all that doesn't change the fact that MSI is a huge company that could do right by the man if they really wanted to.
So save the "holier than thou" and "witchhunt" routine for some other "random people online".
And you are also making assumptions with the "MSI is a huge company that could do right by the man if they really wanted to" statement.
Who said they weren't trying? Unwinder never said that. This article does not state that. MSI has not stated that. If anything, they stated that they want the development of Afterburner to continue. You can make the argument that perhaps they should have reacted sooner, however, that would still be based on speculation, as we don't have enough information to claim they've never tried to resolve the situation.
Is objectivity really such a difficult concept to grasp?
And I don't understand the witch hunt remark. People automatically blaming MSI are the ones closer to performing a so called "witch hunt".
Only msi product I use :eek:
Unlike many here, I have no personal issues with MSI, I currently use an MSI motherboard as I write this and I am very happy with it, so I am not pushing some kind of personal vendetta, and I haven't used MSI afterburner for many years, just angry that a big company has not fixed this (assumed) serious problem for Unwinder, which I am sure they have fixed for all of the rest of their Russian staff, otherwise we would have heard about that a long time ago, so clearly they could have fixed this by now, but haven't, and that is what makes me and others angry, that not all have been treated the same.!!! I expect that there is some kind of contractual clause, or other issue that has caused problems that doesn't effect MSI's other Russian staff, just Unwinder, and that may be why Unwinder appears to be rather relaxed about the situation.
I have no real interest in discussing this any further, but I will come back periodically to see that it has been resolved, and find out what the cause was (apart from sanctions) out of general interest. It would obviously be in MSI's interest to have fixed this long ago, as this kind of negative press has financial costs that go way beyond what it would have cost to have fixed the problem. Many people (and businesses) really do not understand the cost of negative press, even if it a relatively small issue like this, for some, this might be the last straw and the reason why their next product purchase is not an MSI product, and for that, MSI are solely to blame as this issue with Unwinder could clearly have been solved. Now I just want to know why.
I use Afterburner every day. If there's a way to send the guy $ while I still have a Paypal account, hopefully TPU can post a follow up, I'd be happy to send him some $.
And... No.
Alexey/Unwinder *IS* afterburner.
My favourite comment was a genuine non-troll comment about 'Who gives a shit about afterburner for its overlay, just use rivatuner - it's way better and afterburner used it anyway'
I'm sure between Unwinder and W1zzard (Seriously - ATItool was what made TPU explode all those years ago) we could make one hell of an OCing programThey basically paid Alexey to put their name on his program
In it's early days it had exclusive benefits on MSI cards (The options are still there for extended clock/voltage ranges/controls) but Nvidia and AMD limited that with BIOS locksSorry i'm busy shaving my dogs feetMSI Only offered to do something after an entire year had passed and he made it public
Perhaps you should read the headlines, as they contain that basic nugget
I'm not sure why he hasn't gotten around to using alternative payment methods. We have 2 Russian programmers at my company and they're getting paid (they also bailed to Thailand/ Georgia - so that may be why).
It really just sounds like there's more to this story?
Also MSI might not be in direct control of product distribution in Russia. There might be a outside country distributor that's buying the cards then marking them up and selling them in Russia. That's how tech used to flow in back in the good old days.
So I'd like to back-track a little bit. MSI is in a tough spot. However, I still think MSI and the rest of the world need to remember that the Russian people are not responsible for the moron actions of their government. They are just as much the victims as the Ukrainians are.
They can use their branches from other countries without legal issues to pay him
What Alexey brought up is that they're about to reach the expiry of the clause in their contract - when that gets broken at the 1 year mark, we'll find out what happens (Do they lose the rights to the name?)
We're stuck right now.
For example nothing else lets me set a specific MHz + Voltage combination on 30 series GPUs, only nvidias TDP control which doesnt solve that the stock voltages are far too damn high.
That said, there is nothing stopping him working for someone else, a new face appearing with a new program, or one of the old legends creating something again.