Russian developer Alexey Nicolaychuk has said MSI Afterburner is probably “dead.” A Russian programmer better known for creating the seminal RivaTuner hardware monitoring application, Nicolaychuk is the sole coder working on the tool, and he hasn’t received a single payment by Taiwanese hardware company MSI in a year. MSI Afterburner is a popular tool used to overclock and underclock the GPU (via undervolting), monitor hardware performance with its in-game overlay feature and record videos or take quick screenshots. As stated by Nicolaychuk on the Guru 3D forums, MSI Afterburner has been yet another casualty of Putin’s war against Ukraine. The project has been “semi abandoned” by MSI for at least 11 months as the company stopped “performing their obligations under Afterburner license agreement” due to political reasons.
The developer says he feels disappointed and like he is “just beating a dead horse and waste energy on something that is no longer needed” by MSI. The programmer continued working on the project on his own, but now he is thinking about some limited support in his free time while searching for other projects in order to pay his bills. Nicolaychuk also said he plans to continue developing RivaTuner Statistics Server (RTSS), Afterburner’s hardware monitoring backend, which started as a companion software to the aforementioned RivaTuner. RTSS is a “separate and fully hobbyist application created many years before MSI Afterburner was even born,” the coder said, and it’s still fun to develop and design new features for. RTSS backend aside, MSI Afterburner’s halted development would be felt across the whole gaming and enthusiast world. As confirmed by MSI itself, sanctions decided by major countries and corporations against Russia after its invasion of Ukraine made money transfer to Russia a much more difficult and complex affair. All is not lost, however, as MSI was quick to react to Nicolaychuk’s forum message and the clear disappointment expressed by gamers and overclockers alike. The company is well aware of the situation, and it is fully committed to continuing with MSI Afterburner. “Our product marketing & accounting team are dealing with this problem now,” MSI said to Wccftech, and a solution should be arranged soon.
