MSI Afterburner is without a doubt one of the most popular and most used overclocking and GPU tuning utilities out there however due to the recent Russian war, it looks like the developer is facing a funding issue.
MSI Afterburner Utility Hit With Funding Crisis Due To Ongoing Russian War, Company Responds!
MSI Afterburner is probably the first software that comes to mind when we talk about GPU OC & tuning software. It has been widely used by gamers, enthusiasts, and professional overclockers for over a decade. The software has since seen various BETA, updates. Other GPU manufacturers have also released their own OC / Tuning software due to the vast success of MSI's utility but it looks like the MSI Afterburner is in a crisis of its own.
As revealed by the developer of MSI's Afterburner utility, Alexey Nicolaychuk aka "Unwinder", over at Guru3D Forums, the project has run into a funding issue due to the ongoing war and the political turmoil in Russia. International banks have seized SWIFT operations in Russia & US (plus its allies) have proposed a tech ban on Russia. As such, MSI is in a tough spot when it comes to providing the necessary funds to Alexey.
Alexey states in the forums that the project has been left semi-abandoned for the past 11 months and that he continued to perform his obligations however, after continued updates, the situation has become more disappointing for him and he can't put more effort into the project as he has to pay his bills, etc. Following is Alexey's full comment from Guru3D Forums:
No need to be that impatient. It just demotivates to do anything and MSI afterburner project is probably dead.
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 developer (Alexey Nicolaychuk aka "Unwinder")
Intel and NVIDIA have also faced a similar situation with their driver teams in Russia and Ukraine. It was reported that Intel's primary Arc GPU optimization team was situated in Russia and a potential reason why the Arc GPUs were delayed so much had to do with this. The political crisis in Russia is a major issue but it looks like MSI is trying its best to resolve this as the company stated in its official response they provided us:\
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.
MSI rep to Wccftech
Recently, there have been cases of counterfeit MSI Afterburner software floating all over the web which is loaded with malware. MSI has made users aware of this and we also reported this back in November. We hope that there's a resolution to this soon and MSI can provide Alexey with the necessary funds to continue developing the software.
News Source: Videocardz
