MSI Afterburner Project 'Probably Dead,' Due to Ukraine War Sanctions (Updated)
Developer Alexey 'Unwinder' Nicolaychuk explains GPU tool is difficult to update due to sanctions.
One of the most popular GPU performance monitoring and tuning tools is "probably dead," its developer has announced. Alexey 'Unwinder' Nicolaychuk is the Russian developer of MSI Afterburner, and took to the Guru3D forums last week to explain that progress has already been halted for nearly a year due to the "politic[al] situation." This is obviously a reference to the Ukraine war and sanctions on Russia, supported by many companies, such as MSI and Asus.
The news regarding the end of MSI Afterburner development came to light as forum members were talking with 'Unwinder' about using the tool with the new AMD Radeon RX 7000 graphics cards like the RX 7900 XT. In response to a query about upcoming support for the new RDNA3 GPUs, the developer made it clear that anyone waiting for new GPU support will probably be waiting a very long time. Actually, MSI Afterburner may even have reached the end of its development already.
'Unwinder' informed his forum-mates that MSI Afterburner has already been in stasis for some time. It has been almost a year since MSI collaborated with the Russian developer on the software. Apparently, the Afterburner license agreement that was key to the company / developer relationship was effectively dissolved about 11 months ago. 'Unwinder' has tried to continue to update and refine the project without the support of MSI's hardware and software resources, but he opined that the job has been like "flogging a dead horse." He said he would continue to offer some support for the GPU tool in his spare time, but he will likely have to now focus on other paid projects, simply to pay the bills.
MSI Responds: It's Not Dead. It's Getting Better!
This story seems to be developing fast, with MSI keen to make sure its popular Afterburner app continues on. Our colleagues at PC Gamer have gotten a statement from MSI, which should put some worries to rest. "We fully intend to continue with MSI Afterburner," a rep told the publication. "MSI have been working on a solution and expect it to be resolved soon."
Whether or not that "solution" would involve the original developer was briefly up in the air, until WCCF editor Hassan Mujtaba posted a response from MSI on Twitter. "Our product marketing & accounting team are dealing with this problem now," an MSI rep reportedly told Mujtaba. "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 this."
So it seems like now that the Afterburner situation has come under a public spotlight, MSI is suddenly eager to figure out how to pay Nicolaychuk for his ongoing efforts. Hopefully, that will include compensation for the last year of development, as well as some quick work getting support going for AMD's latest cards, and improving support for Nvidia's 40-series GPUs as well.
We've reached out to MSI with some questions of our own, and will update this story if we get any more substantive information from the company.
Stick to the Official MSI Afterburner Site for Downloads
As of now, the last stable release of MSI Afterburner is dated December 2021. If you are using a supported GPU and still use Afterburner by default on new builds, please make sure you check the official site only for downloads and updates. Last November, MSI Afterburner was in the news for being targeted by malware distributors, who set up fake but convincing-looking download websites. The genuine download is still available direct from MSI, with no hint given about the development being on-hold (or worse), despite the news above.
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Users on the lookout for an alternative up-to-date overclocking and undervolting tool for their GPU might check with their specific GPU vendor, or consider universal alternatives like Asus' GPU Tweak. AMD GPU users also have some pretty extensive tools in the Adrenalin Edition Software they will have installed (check under the Performance tab).
RTSS Development Continues
In some better news from 'Unwinder,' in the same forum thread, he confirms that development of RTSS (the popular RivaTuner Statistics Server) is a separate hobby project, not dependent on MSI, so it is very much alive and kicking, and will continue to "get future updates and support."
Mark Tyson is a news editor at Tom's Hardware. He enjoys covering the full breadth of PC tech; from business and semiconductor design to products approaching the edge of reason.
- Matt Safford Managing Editor
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BX4096 ReplyAfterburner dev said:"Actually we’re approaching one year mark since the day when MSI stopped performing their obligations under Afterburner license agreement due to 'politic situation'."
MSI has no obligations to the developer according to international law. The country was sanctioned legally, following an illegal (according to the world: 143 countries voted to view it as such, with only 5 (Russia, Belarus, North Korea, Syria, and Nicaragua) voting against) invasion of a sovereign state. The reason I'm mentioning it is not because of the politics, but to point out that the developer uses the situation to spread pro-Russian propaganda.
As for MSI Afterburner's future, I'm sure there's plenty of talented programmers can be found elsewhere. I stopped using it years ago anyway.
(reason for edit: hasty typos) -
ManDaddio Well it is sad individuals have to suffer because of what governments decide to do.Reply
I don't think things that don't have much or anything to do with "the war" should fall under sanctions.
Sanctions rarely deter and mostly hurt people in one way or another.
Anyway, I am glad I know this now as I don't like using unsupported apps in most cases.
Afterburner is loved by many. -
atomicWAR Lets keep the politics out of the forum please. I get this subject is rife for political slants but Tom's isn't the place for that.Reply -
Rogue Leader All,Reply
This is a politically charged topic and as such will create a lot of opinions. That said this forum is dedicated to being apolicial. Meaning if you decide to take a severe political slant or use this comment section to denigrate any country or ethnicity you will be sanctioned. Keep it civil.
BX4096 said:but to point out that the developer uses the situation to spread pro-Russian propaganda.
Hint, this is not the direction you want to continue. -
nightbird321 As someone who uses Afterburner and a MSI 4090, this is important news. I hope the issue is resolved amicably.Reply -
ezst036 If MSI actually cared to save the project, they could easily open source it.Reply
I highly doubt they will. Just saying, they could. -
JarredWaltonGPU Reply
I'm not sure how him saying he's not getting the information he needs to continue development, or being paid for that matter, qualifies as "spreading pro-Russian propaganda." Sounds like a statement of fact from his view, and moving to a new country isn't exactly an easy solution.BX4096 said:"Actually we’re approaching one year mark since the day when MSI stopped performing their obligations under Afterburner license agreement due to 'politic situation'."
MSI has no obligations to the developer according to international law. The country was sanctioned legally, following an illegal (according to the world: 143 countries voted to view it as suck, with only 5 (including Russia and Belarus) voting against) invasion of a sovereign state. The reason I'm mentioning it is not because of politics, but to point out that the developer uses the situation to spread pro-Russian propaganda.
As for MSI Afterburner's future, I'm sure there's plenty of talented programmers can be found elsewhere. I stopped using it years ago anyway.
As for others being able to do this, I'm sure there are plenty of programmers that could do it, including within MSI. But the benefit of MSI Afterburner was that it worked with just about any GPU (outside of Intel Arc and many integrated solutions). I don't need another Asus GPU Tweak clone, or ASRock OC Tuner, or Gigabyte Control Center, or EVGA Precision X1, or any other specialty variants that are bloated and only support graphics cards from one company. MSI Afterburner is lightweight and works at least as well as any of those others I just named.
I do wonder who actually owns the source code for this project. Sounds like some of it is MSI, but potentially a lot of it is the developer's own stuff and perhaps MSI doesn't even have all the code necessary. -
hannibal Reply
MSI don´t own the code behind the afterburber, the programmer does own the rights. MSI has just lisensed the product aka payed for it and thus allowed the development, but as I said, they don´t own the code.ezst036 said:If MSI actually cared to save the project, they could easily open source it.
I highly doubt they will. Just saying, they could. -
There has actually been an update. MSI has now responded with a statement to Hassan Mujtaba of Wccftech:Reply
"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 this"1612449753903554560View: https://twitter.com/hms1193/status/1612449753903554560 -
BX4096 ReplyJarredWaltonGPU said:I'm not sure how him saying he's not getting the information he needs to continue development, or being paid for that matter, qualifies as "spreading pro-Russian propaganda." Sounds like a statement of fact from his view, and moving to a new country isn't exactly an easy solution...
As MSI's former employee, I'm sure he knows perfectly well that MSI is a Taiwanese company and therefore is subject to Taiwanese laws. Taiwan is one of the countries that joined the international economic sanctions opposing Russia's invasion of Ukraine, so accusing the company in not fulfilling its "obligations" is biased, to say the least.