When AMD was firm with PixelButts about it being "never released" (despite having a non-ES card w/ a production vBIOS in-hand), I started to wonder if there was more to all of this than just a neat GPU that never saw widespread adoption (even in-industry).
For what it's worth, and this may not matter to most people, I do have some insight into how this works specifically with console development hardware. The specifics vary a bit but GENERALLY speaking you are intended to return the hardware to them (see: Sony, Microsoft, Nintendo, Apple, Etc) to which they either A) get resold to newer devs at a lower price as the hardware is no longer the latest (assume final hardware for this situation), or B) disposed of by them in e-waste, typically boated over to China, where most of the e-waste recycling takes place.
Because of how things play out in reality you sometimes see 1) Auctions of the hardware when not authorized (accidental or intentional), 2) Companies going under and avenues to properly dispose/return of it are not done at all due to finances or people holding onto stuff with minimal to no accountability or adequate tracking, or my favorite 3) it was sent back, was boated over for recycling, but survived before it was destroyed and someone salvaged the parts or system and sold it. This is usually why a receipt of destruction is desired but sometimes its so much bulk that its easier to not do that. The third one is usually why you se mountains of 360 devkits just pieced together for a couple bucks. It works enough and theres pleny. They might red ring in 2 months but at the price you paid and condition its kinda expected. Sometimes rarer stuff gets through but depends on what it is or hardware.
It'd be hilarious (and terrible) if we enthusiasts got AMD in trouble w/ the IRS. From what I've ran across, ES and devkits are often supposed to be destroyed and written-off on taxes.
In this case, it is unclear what would happen but I am leaning toward nothing happening at all because almost 100 were sold on ebay, at a pretty low price, very publicly despite the mislabeled title of it, numerous people with them now so tracking that down would be expensive and perhaps pointless, and realistically the company they came from probably gets a slap on the wrist since it was as AMD described custom to whoever made it so its more likely the loss of that company is minimal enough that they dont care. This wasnt some back alley deal either this was pretty clearly lots of stock just being listed without a care in the world. If anyone got in trouble it would be whoever listed it, if at all. And even then they're a pain to even get working beyond mining so I very much doubt driver wise anyone is worried here either unless its like core to your system or internal stuff but it's drivers in the end it's not that bad.
Everything I've said typically applies to final hardware rather than prototypes or engineering samples (ES/EVT/DVT/EVA, etc). The more prototype-y it is the more companies care and the more likely they are destroyed for good making them significantly rarer in the long run. These boards are virtually final so it doesn't even seem that bad. If anything the only unusual aspect of this is it's unreleased entirely. I would question why there's even a full production version in the wild before questioning 100 ES cards being out there given what's known about it. If we saw a board where it was definitely straight out of the engineering department's bench then I would say worry.
I collect development hardware for an assortment of personal reasons, I just know theres some things not worth the trouble (expenses, questionable sources, complexity or damage of the device, software even existing at all, legality) or are basically bricks. The v540 is much closer to usable and weird than it is a useless brick, so long as the software side can somehow get things to play nice. But as it stands it's closer to a brick that mines until this changes. You can make a somewhat good argument that this is like the v420 (nice), which never released either and we've seen exactly 1 of thanks to Fouquin, and afaik nobody cared.
Then you see the people dropping 20k on an item in not even that great condition when its usually going around 600-1000.
