MSI Afterburner software without MSI support, “project is probably dead”

MSI Afterburner project faces difficult times

Alexey “Unwinder” Nicolaychuk confirmed that Afterburner project could be dead. 

The most popular overclocking tool for modern graphics cards is facing licensing problems due to the ongoing war in Ukraine. Due to sanctions, companies such as MSI are unable to perform their obligations under the agreement signed with the developer. Alexey, who is based in Russia is now continuing the project without MSI’s support.

The developer confirmed that the project has been dead for over 11 months now. The current political situation, as he explains, is preventing MSI from performing its obligations. The project is now only supported by Alexey during his spare time.

Alexey on MSI Afterburner support, Source: Guru3D

MSI Afterburner is one of the most popular tools for discrete GPU overclocking. The software is a spiritual successor to RivaTuner software, which has been used for GPU overclocking many years ago. Users may find it problematic to find an alternative that supports all many GPU vendors natively. Most brands now include their own monitoring and simple overclocking software that also controls GPU functionality such as lighting control or fan speeds. MSI also has such a tool called MSI Center.

What is worth mentioning is that MSI is still officially listing the software for newly released GPUs, including RTX 4070 Ti. The popularity of the software means that scammers are trying to take advantage of it by releasing cloned apps with malware. MSI is well aware of this fact and continues to mention the official source for the software is still MSI’s own website. The following tweet was posted in November, so many months after not fulfilling Afterburner licensing obligations:

MSI mentioning Afterburner, Source: MSI

The only good news is that RTSS (RivaTuner Statistic Server) is not an MSI tool, therefore it is not affected by sanctions. This statistics and overlay software has full support from Alexey and will continue to be supported as it was. That said, the 3rd party software that uses RTSS should not be impacted.

Alexey confirms that he will continue to support the Afterburner project during his free time, but this is not the full support that many of us would prefer. What is important to note is that the sanctions may not be limited to financial compensation but also access to prerelease hardware, essentially stagnating the development process or preventing it altogether.

Update: According to Hassan Mujtaba (Wccftech), MSI is now trying to solve the payment issue. There is a chance this will be sorted out, after all:

Source: Guru3D Forums