MSI Afterburner Developer Hasn't been PAID for a Year, Product Development in Limbo?

[b1k3rdude]

Summary

It is used across graphics card brands and allows you overclock, unclock & monitor both NVIDIA and AMD GPUs. So while you enjoy Afterburner with your new or old GPU, do remember that Afterburner's developer hasn't been paid a penny for however many versions of the application.

 

Quotes

Quote

MSI Afterburner is an important tool used not just for its overclocking features and monitoring on the app's UI, but the in-game overlay feature (ability to have GPU and other real-time stats overlaid on top of game streams). Discontinuation of Afterburner could potentially affect millions of game streamers that rely on this feature. Unwinder clarified that he will continue to support RivaTuner Statistics Server (RTSS), the backend component that makes Afterburner overlay work.

 

My thoughts

I've personaly, been using Afterburner for years. It is currently used to undervolt and monitor my GPU and monitor my CPU. I have sent a formal complaint to MSI Europe and reached out to some tech sites that MSI advertise on.

 

Sources

https://www.techpowerup.com/303298/msi-afterburner-developer-hasnt-been-paid-for-a-year-product-development-in-limbo
https://forums.guru3d.com/threads/7900xt-power-usage-not-visible.446010/#post-6090142

[xAcid9]

I hope he open a Patreon or something and work on independent project similar or better than MSI Afterburner or at least get paid to keep developing RTSS. 

 

.. on 2nd thought, can he do that? He still f'ed because of the sanctioned. 

 

 

Also.. 

 

[Doobeedoo]

This sucks, it's so useful I use it all the time, even OC part aside, just app info monitoring graphs history and in game overlay. 

Hopefully this can get resolved somehow. Can't think of 1:1 alternative.

Open source it? Would be shame it just left abandoned.

[porina]

2 hours ago, xAcid9 said:

.. on 2nd thought, can he do that? He still f'ed because of the sanctioned. 

This. I'm not up to date on global relations but certainly many countries and/or financial organisations may not be able to deal effectively with Russia as long as the current situation is ongoing.

[starsmine]

I dont know how they can pay him without breaking sanctions. Its not really on him or on MSI.

The article pointing out this is just wild to me

Quote

There are also neutral countries like India, which have direct settlement of Russian Rubles without involving US Dollars or SWIFT. 

Going around sanctions to not break a sanction is still breaking sanctions. Like what the fuck. That isn't "perfectly legal"

[AlTech]

10 hours ago, starsmine said:

I dont know how they can pay him without breaking sanctions. Its not really on him or on MSI.

There really is only one way out of the situation, which MSI Afterburner's Author doesn't seem willing to take: leave Russia to avoid the sanctions.

 

Otherwise MSI should be looking to find another developer that they can legally pay to develop and maintain the application.

 

If they can't for whatever reason then they should just open source the code as mentioned above and hopefully some dedicated individuals can save it.

10 hours ago, starsmine said:

The article pointing out this is just wild to me

Going around sanctions to not break a sanction is still breaking sanctions. Like what the fuck. That isn't "perfectly legal"

There may be less severe consequences than breaking the sanctions directly.

[ImorallySourcedElectrons]

1 hour ago, starsmine said:

I dont know how they can pay him without breaking sanctions. Its not really on him or on MSI.

If MSI has a Russian subsidiary that still has money within the country they could might be able to do it without really violating any sanctions, at that point no money is transferred to Russia. Alternatively they could try to convince a distributor to do it with a giant "IOY" attached to it when the sanctions are lifted eventually.

 

As to why he's not moving abroad, given that this guy was already working on programs like this in the 90s, we're probably talking about someone in their fifties, maybe sixties. Probably has a family, house, etc.

[starcar]

@GDRRiley Not sure if all this talk about sanctions and their circumvention is somewhere this thread should be going to.

[Quackers101]

it seems like some parts might be related to banks/credit cards shutting down due to... you know

[Mark Kaine]

oh yeah, i knew he's russian but i didn't know he's *in* russia...

 

honestly I always found it weird that the whole thing basically relies on him... a single person... 

 

they should really open source it, lots of improvement possibilities... let me turn off this stupid "priorities" for once... 

 

what's the latest version anyway? 

 

 

[xAcid9]

14 hours ago, ImorallySourcedElectrons said:

As to why he's not moving abroad, given that this guy was already working on programs like this in the 90s, we're probably talking about someone in their fifties, maybe sixties. Probably has a family, house, etc.

+1 I remember using RivaTuner to tweak my GPU almost 20 years ago. IIRC he's the sole developer for RivaTuner and later turn into MSI Afterburner/EVGA Precision/ASUS Gpu Tweak. MSI probably don't own the source code for MSI Afterburner. 

[ImorallySourcedElectrons]

26 minutes ago, xAcid9 said:

+1 I remember using RivaTuner to tweak my GPU almost 20 years ago. IIRC he's the sole developer for RivaTuner and later turn into MSI Afterburner/EVGA Precision/ASUS Gpu Tweak. MSI probably don't own the source code for MSI Afterburner. 

Yeah, and while the software itself is relatively simple in theory, it's somewhat problematic to actually make something that supports so many different cards with the same feature depth.

[Radium_Angel]

6 hours ago, Mark Kaine said:

honestly I always found it weird that the whole thing basically relies on him... a single person...

At the gov't agency I work for, we have multi-million dollar instruments whose software was written by a 2 person company. It's more common than you think.

This situation (not the war or sanctions) has been working for MSI for decades, no one could foresee how this may have gone sideways, and I suspect he's not paid enough for this single application to warrant upending his life and starting fresh elsewhere (assuming he can even leave physically) for payment from MSI.

 

It's a mess no matter how you look at it, no one is at fault here except the powers that be.

[Winterlight]

Main question do is still safe to use that app?

[starsmine]

31 minutes ago, Winterlight said:

Main question do is still safe to use that app?

Why would that be the main question?

[Holmes108]

4 minutes ago, starsmine said:

Why would that be the main question?

 

Probably the same reason concerns have come up about Kapersky, or Chinese software. I'm not saying I think it's unsafe, but it seems reasonable to be at least a little concerned about software coming out of a potentially somewhat "hostile" country. Even if the individual doesn't have bad intentions, the more tyrannical the government, the more they could potentially exert it's influence on one of it's companies/individuals.

[Winterlight]

42 minutes ago, Holmes108 said:

 

Probably the same reason concerns have come up about Kapersky, or Chinese software. I'm not saying I think it's unsafe, but it seems reasonable to be at least a little concerned about software coming out of a potentially somewhat "hostile" country. Even if the individual doesn't have bad intentions, the more tyrannical the government, the more they could potentially exert it's influence on one of it's companies/individuals.

I think most people thought that MSI is developer until this week.

[starsmine]

49 minutes ago, Holmes108 said:

 

Probably the same reason concerns have come up about Kapersky, or Chinese software. I'm not saying I think it's unsafe, but it seems reasonable to be at least a little concerned about software coming out of a potentially somewhat "hostile" country. Even if the individual doesn't have bad intentions, the more tyrannical the government, the more they could potentially exert it's influence on one of it's companies/individuals.

anything that phones home from those countries sure, but Rivatuner and its derivatives dont. If that is your main question about the software because you just NOW learned it was a russian. you are not generally asking the right questions at all. 

And no, many people did not think MSI was the dev, Rivatuner is OLD. The only people who dont know would be people who got into overclocking only inside of the last decade. 

[Holmes108]

48 minutes ago, starsmine said:

anything that phones home from those countries sure, but Rivatuner and its derivatives dont.

 

 

How would an average user know anything about that? You might have the right answer to the question, and I don't disagree. I'm just saying it's not an unreasonable question to have.

[Holmes108]

48 minutes ago, Winterlight said:

I think most people thought that MSI is developer until this week.

 

Maybe, which is why the user above is asking the question now.

[Ubersonic]

On 1/9/2023 at 6:02 PM, starsmine said:

I dont know how they can pay him without breaking sanctions. Its not really on him or on MSI.

The odd thing is, MSI say they can't pay him because sanctions, but MSI are Taiwanese not American/European and so have far laxer sanctions to adhere to, to the point that they're still exporting GPUs/motherboards/etc to Russia O.o

 

17 hours ago, Mark Kaine said:

honestly I always found it weird that the whole thing basically relies on him... a single person... 

Basically he created the original Rivatuner, then MSI/EVGA/ASUS offered him money to make reskinned versions of it for them, and thus Afterburner, Precision-X and GPU Tweak were born.

 

NB: EVGA cut ties with him about ten years ago after they stole his source code and had their in house team make a Precision-X clone to replace the original, it caused quite a stir at the time.

[porina]

7 hours ago, Ubersonic said:

The odd thing is, MSI say they can't pay him because sanctions, but MSI are Taiwanese not American/European and so have far laxer sanctions to adhere to, to the point that they're still exporting GPUs/motherboards/etc to Russia O.o

I'm no expert in international laws, but laws of other countries can affect them if they want to have a continued good relationship.

 

As an example, I live in the UK and used to work for a UK located company with parent company in USA. I had to obey US export regulations and was given specific training on such. This not only included physical items but also what information I gave to people in other countries. I had regular calls with the companies China office during the time when anti-China sentiment was stirring up. That was fun.

[Kisai]

4 hours ago, porina said:

I'm no expert in international laws, but laws of other countries can affect them if they want to have a continued good relationship.

 

As an example, I live in the UK and used to work for a UK located company with parent company in USA. I had to obey US export regulations and was given specific training on such. This not only included physical items but also what information I gave to people in other countries. I had regular calls with the companies China office during the time when anti-China sentiment was stirring up. That was fun.

One has to consider the over-reach of various countries. Most of the West depends on other countries in the West for software or hardware. It's practically impossible for one country to go "no export to China/Russia" and have all the rest go "Okay!"

 

No, global trade is never that easy. That's why counties imposing rules like in the EU (GDPR, USB-C charging, etc) or "Right to Repair" laws tend to have global reach as a consequence. Companies want to reduce their costs, and if complying is cheaper than fighting it, then they will. No point in giving a country spite, because that could mean your products get banned "just cause."

 

The best solution for the MSI developer getting paid would be having the developer leave the Russia at his own cost, and then have him flown to Taiwan and and paid in person as MSI staff. Would he want to do that? I don't know. Maybe he has a family that wouldn't want to be uprooted. Maybe getting out of the country is extortionately expensive and difficult right now.

 

At any rate, this is one of the better arguments for open source software, despite the implications, if the country you live in is considered antagonistic, then people will not trust the software unless the source code can be examined. Like people still use NGINX, and that is considered "better" than Apache HTTPD, despite sanctions as well, but both are open source, so they can be examined.

 

[circeseye]

well a new version came out yesterday. so its still being worked on for now
https://www.guru3d.com/files-details/msi-afterburner-beta-download.html

 

 

the developer has had it on guru3d before msi got in on it in 2009

 

 

[dalekphalm]

When it comes to something like Sanctions against Russia, especially sanctions levied by the US - you can pretty much guarantee that a Taiwanese company will want to follow those sanctions. Not to dive into the political realm, but Taiwan kind of relies on US support for independence against China.

 

There's no good solution to this problem - they either need to wait for the sanctions to end, or the dev needs to move out of Russia. Any other way for MSI to funnel money to the guy (BTC payment, intermediary transfer account, whatever) would almost certainly be illegal and a violation of the sanctions.

 

As for making Afterburner open source? To me, that would depend on one very simple question:
Does MSI own the IP to Afterburner, or does the Dev? If the Dev does, then it's not MSI's place to say whether it should be open source (though even if he does own the IP, there could be licensing deals in place that prevent this).