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A popular GPU tool, MSI Afterburner, is seemingly under threat, although despite the controversy that has just sprung up around the app, MSI assures us there are no plans to scrap the utility (which is used for overclocking and more).
Technical power up (opens in new tab) originally picked up this story and found a post from Afterburner developer Alexey Nicolaychuk, known as “Unwinder” in the Guru3D Forums (opens in new tab)in which he posted about giving up on the app.
In a thread about an Afterburner issue, Nicolaychuk replied that “MSI Afterburner project is probably dead,” and when questioned about that statement, went on to say that “war and politics are the reasons.”
He continued, “I didn’t mention it in the news thread about MSI Afterburner development, but the project has been half-abandoned by the company for quite some time…I’ll try to keep supporting it myself while I have some free time, but will have to probably drop it and switch to something else so I can pay my bills. (sic)
The core issue here is that Nicolaychuk is a Russian citizen, and after the invasion of Ukraine, MSI cut off his payments, allowing him to work on the project on his own in 2022 with no pay coming through, a situation that left him increasingly disillusioned. . He says elsewhere, “I feel like I’m just beating a dead horse and wasting energy on something the company no longer needs.” (sic)
PC gamer (opens in new tab) goes on to report that MSI has indeed confirmed that “payments have been suspended due to the RU/UA war and the economic regulations that came with it,” but the company insists Afterburner is neither dead nor abandoned.
MSI told PC Gamer, “We fully intend to continue with MSI Afterburner. MSI has been working on a fix and expects it to be resolved soon.”
Analysis: hopeful signs that a solution can be reached
What kind of solution could that be? Well, there’s a clue elsewhere, as Tech Powerup noticed that a Wccftech writer passed an update from MSI through a tweet (opens in new tab), in which the company said: “Our product marketing and accounting team is now dealing with this issue. Due to the war, our payment could not be successfully transferred to the author’s bank account. We are still in contact with him and are figuring out how to resolve this.”
If there is no financial solution in terms of being able to pay the existing developer, is it possible that MSI will look for other angles, like another developer maybe? We’ll just have to keep an eye on this space because it sounds like despite Nicolaychuk’s claims, MSI doesn’t want the project shut down.
That’s not surprising, since Afterburner is a popular tool that can be used for overclocking, as we mentioned, as well as other GPU tricks like undervolting – which makes the graphics card gobble up less juice and indeed makes less noise (something RTX 4090 does). – owners have been very happy with it). interested in since the map came out).
Here at TechRadar, we also find Afterburner very useful for benchmarking games that don’t have their own built-in benchmark run. We hope that MSI will stay true to its statement here, and that a solution will be found soon enough, as more fuss is made about the net.