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
What I doubt is that removing MSI's name from Afterburner's name would impact MSI's sales in any significant way. For example, I'm certain that many users on this forum would think twice or outright boycott MSI if the situation with Afterburner turns for the worst. The same would most likely apply to users on other tech forums, YouTube channels, etc. But would the average gamer know and/or care about Afterburner's fate? How many gamers rely on Afterburner in their daily gaming habits? What percentage of graphics card purchasers in general are aware of Afterburner's existence and would care enough to boycott MSI's cards, or even their entire lineup of products? My guess is that percentage is very low. Granted, I'm sure MSI would rather not lose any such potential customers if they can help it, but it isn't something that would significantly impact their bottom line.
Disclaimer: Personally, I would not be boycotting MSI. Afterburner is nowhere near critically important to me, 99% of what I need it for is the overlay to display various system parameters, and even that is something I don't use frequently. I see no point in overclocking and the benefits of undervolting would be minimal for me, as I don't spend that much time gaming. I also tend to not boycott companies in general, even if I have some issues with them. If I did that, I would have no PC and barely any other electronics. Whenever I purchase a piece of hardware, I select it based on its performance and price, not on the companies' politics or reputation.
Some people buy MSI exclusively because they know the program and trust the brand because of it
When their reputation takes a hit in pro circles, it's a trickle down effect: elite users stop recommending them, then reviewers pass on a negative comment, then people reading who dont understand the full story internalise that "MSI bad"
I bet gigabytes sales are going great after their 750W PSU's started exploding, even on the unaffected lines
Yknow, after all the crap about fake afterburner download links...
The original legit one thinks it's november 2023 already
Besides, if users internalized "<insert company name here> = bad", then the entire PC market would've collapsed by now. Through the years, I've seen many negative news related to Intel, NVIDIA, and AMD, yet they are still going strong.I'm sure their sales figures are worse than they had hoped. I'm also sure they are still selling PSUs and other hardware, and their business isn't in any danger of going under because of the PSU fiasco.
Also, I want to set the record straight, just in case someone might have made incorrect assumptions: I do want this situation to have a happy resolution for both parties, and Alexey to receive what is owed to him thus far.
Look at all the drama over gigabytes PSUs, MSI's motherboard VRMs, 4090s exploding - all these things get a lot of attention and commentary, and to people who just skim these things without a full understand they just summarise it down as "avoid that brand i heard bad things"
Source guru3D Forums
"Dear forum visitors,
There were a lot of discussions about the future of MSI Afterburner project in different places during the last days. Let me summarize things and address the most frequently asked questions:
- I see that a lot of you are offering to donate to compensate possible project loss. I really thank you and appreciate it, but it is not necessary. Probably you see the situation in too dramatic light and believe that it is much worse for me than it actually is due to misunderstanding of MSI Afterburner development process. MSI AB is not fulltime development job and it is not the only thing I do for living, my primary job is software development in medical R&D company. MSI AB and RTSS are pet projects which I supported during my free time in the evenings and weekends during last 25 years. That’s not a case of losing the only source of income and becoming hungry and homeless. So thanks again, but donations are not necessary, partial income loss is sad and sensible but not critical for my life conditions.
- A lot of you offer to rebrand application, sell it in STEAM or monetize it in other forms. I don’t see it as even remotely possible scenario. According to our license agreement I exclusively own source code (so technically I can do anything with it) but the company exclusively owns product name, branding and distribution rights. So doing so will result in license agreement violation from my side. I respect the agreements I sign and won’t do it under any conditions, it is a question of reputation.
- Some users believe that I should relocate from Russia to continue working on the project. I don’t see it as an option too. I had multiple job offers and could live and work abroad decades ago, I have the possibility to migrate to any country, but I was born here and 4 generations of my family were born and lived in this place. It is a small Russian city located on Azov sea coast near Russia/Ukraine border, it is located extremely close to Mariupol and warzone. Yes, living conditions suck badly here even comparing to big Russian cities like Moscow, but it is my birthplace, home and I love it. My grand and grand grandparents are buried here, my aged relatives live here and I simply cannot allow myself to leave them and escape. It is not a question of political preferences; it is a question of loving your home and your family.
- MSI are indeed trying to solve the problem now. But they tried to solve it a few times during 2022 and each previous attempt failed. Being a realist I understand that current attempt may fail as well, so I simply prepared myself to the worst case and accepted the fact that project is possibly dead. Please, no need to blame MSI for this situation. It is a stallmate case, when they want to continue cooperation but see no ways to do so at the moment."