MSI Afterburner is an app used all over the world for graphics card monitoring, overclocking and undervolting. It’s become quite synonymous with general GPU tinkering, but the app’s developer suggested earlier this month that it might not be long to live in a forum post. MSI disagrees, telling us “we fully intend to continue with MSI Afterburner.”
MSI Afterburner was developed by Alexey ‘Unwinder’ Nicolaychuk, a Russian national who has been running the overclocking app for years. Nicolaychuk is also responsible for developing RivaTuner Statistics Server, which is part of the fundamental software layer that powers Afterburner.
In a post on the Guru3D Forums (opens in new tab) (through TechPowerUp (opens in new tab)), Nicolaychuk suggests that Afterburner development is “semi-abandoned”.
“…MSI afterburner project is probably dead,” says Nicolaychuk.
“War and politics are the reasons. I didn’t mention it in the news thread about the development of MSI Afterburner, but the project has been half abandoned by the company for quite some time. Actually, we are approaching the year after the day MSI stopped fulfilling of their obligations under the Afterburner license agreement due to ‘politics [sic] situation’.”
Nicolaychuk says development on the app has continued for the past 11 months, but that may end soon as well.
We are approaching the one year milestone since the day MSI stopped fulfilling their obligations under the Afterburner licensing agreement.
Alexey “Developer” Nicolaychuk
“I have tried to meet my commitments and have worked on the project on my own for the past 11 months, but it has resulted in nothing but disappointment; I feel like I am just beating a dead horse and wasting energy on something that is not business is no longer necessary.
“Anyway, I’ll try to keep it on my own while I have some free time, but I’ll probably have to drop it and switch to something else so I can pay my bills.”
Development of the RivaTuner Statistics Server – software that is critical to many of Afterburner’s functions – is essentially separate from Afterburner and will continue, Nicolaychuk notes.
Nicolaychuk suggests the problem is due to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and we’ve since confirmed with MSI that this is the case. MSI has stated to PC Gamer that payments have been halted due to the ongoing war in Ukraine, saying “payments were suspended due to the RU/UA war and the economic regulations that came with it.”
The ongoing invasion has caused many countries and companies to withdraw from Russia or significantly reduce their footprint in the country. The banking system used internationally to easily transfer money around the world, SWIFT, is restricted in Russia. Many of the country’s banks have been cut off from the system since last March. Yet according to A report from Yale (opens in new tab)updated January 9, 2023, Micro-Star International Co. (MSI) still active in Russia.
MSI disagrees that this is the end for Afterburner.
We are determined to continue with MSI Afterburner.
MSI
“We are determined to continue with MSI Afterburner,” MSI tells PC Gamer. “MSI has been working on a fix and expects it to be fixed soon.”
Whether in the same form or something else, this doesn’t sound like the end for the Afterburner software. Though it’s unclear whether that means finding a way to pay Nicolaychuk, the application’s sole custodian for many years, or whether you’ll need to implement some other plan to fully develop the overclocking app.