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
And perhaps you should not be passive-aggressive to your users.
Users here seem to react as if I'm some kind of MSI shill so I defend the company and blame the developer. That is not the case. I believe both parties have mishandled the situation. It could very well be more MSI's fault, but Unwinder doesn't seem to have handled it optimally either.
I acknowledge that MSI reacting (at least publicly) now, after a year, doesn't inspire much confidence. However, if we assume this was apathy on MSI's part, then why didn't Unwinder inform the public earlier? Why wait an entire year? That part is on him. If I were in his shoes, I would've given MSI maybe a few months of buffer, and then make an announcement. An entire year is a lot to just sit there and do nothing about not being paid.
Besides, if he could afford to wait for a year, then I get the feeling that he wasn't in much need of that money in the first place. I'm not denying MSi's responsibility, but just sayin'.
Have a nice day.
I agree with Lex - MSI may have their hands tied here. And making payments to some "off shore" account may put them shackles too.
I also think it important to remember MSI Afterburner is not a product MSI sold. It is free. And I would venture to say no one bought a MSI graphics card just to get MSI Afterburner.
A lot of guessing going on here. We all should reserve judgement until all the facts are in - "IF" that ever happens.
Also the name "MSI Afterburner" may be trademarked, but the word "afterburner" is not. I know that I refer to the program as just Afterburner. Someone else can pick it up, and rebrand it as just Afterburner. Hopefully, it will not a GPU or graphics card maker - to avoid even the appearance of favoritism or tweaks that favor a specific brand. No doubt everyone here would love it if it became...
[worm can opener]
[INDENT]Microsoft Afterburner![/INDENT]
[/worm can opener]
;)
PS: Don't believe the polls. It is very likely many poll respondents are not free (or feel safe) to say how they truly feel.
Stick to the topic.
This is not a discussion about who is at fault for the war in Ukraine, who can stop it, who the leader is that is responsible, or other off topic comments.
Any more off topic (political or other) posts will result in warnings with points, reply bans or more.
I won't link because they deserve a DDOS, not ad revenue
Ah yes, let's install Geforce drivers on my AMD card to get EVGA precision to work
This story fully sounds like a devout modder that had some half formalized agreement with a developer to make stuff for a game, and then suddenly got left hanging at the least sign of trouble - all the while developer was still receiving content. It sounds unjust, unfair.
I personally don't use AB as I just use the Tuning in AMD software but I DO use RTSS plugged into AIDA64 for my LCD monitoring setup for the FPS counter(not a fan of overlays)
My guess is Unwinder needs MSI a lot more than MSI needs him, which would be a decent explanation in my opinion as to why MSI is reacting (publicly) only after being put on the spot.
We will never have the full story, so all we can do is guess, but I'm still kind of intrigued that Unwinder is much less upset with this whole ordeal than other people on various forums. One would think it would be the other way round.
If MSI wants Afterburner to remain in development, then they do need him, yes. Even if they own the rights to the product (which I doubt) and can switch developers, that would most likely result in failure, as nobody is better equipped to develop Afterburner than Unwinder.
What I meant was that, (hypothetically) should MSI make the decision to abandon Afterburner, I'm guessing they aren't really going to lose much. MSI's reputation will suffer, sure, but that would be among enthusiasts that use Afterburner. I sincerely doubt that is a large percentage of the company's customers. Will MSI's sales suffer? Probably not to any meaningful extent. Any boycott of MSI's products would be limited to the aforementioned enthusiasts. And even then, chances are not all of them would participate in said boycott, and of those that do, not all would boycott all of MSI's products but just the graphics cards.
Would a boycott of all people that seem to care about the situation really be sufficient to make even a small dent in MSI's sales? My guess is no.
Whereas on the other hand, I would assume that Unwinder would much rather continue his relationship with MSI, than look for a new job, especially considering the current "state of affairs".
I can try putting it a different way: Unwinder stands to lose more from ending his MSI contract/relationship than MSI does.Exactly. He does seem to understand the situation is unpleasant for all parties involved. My point was that I would've assumed people here would understand that as well.
And if MSI really does stand to lose much more, why are people so mad? I mean, people consider MSI to be evil, greedy, etc. so they should be happy that such a large corporation would be feeling some pain.
Also, if Unwinder can really remove MSI's branding without any consequences, perhaps he should do so and just ask for donations via some service that isn't completely blocked in Russia. Or maybe he could approach a different company that would be willing to finance him. Maybe we can have ASUS Afterburner (yes, I know they already have a tool) or Gigabyte Afterburner, or Sapphire Afterburner, etc.
If anything, you seem a bit condescending at the moment.