MSI Afterburner is an app used around the world for monitoring, overclocking, and undervoltage adjustment of graphics cards. The app has become synonymous with general GPU tinkering, but the app's developer suggested in a forum post earlier this month that the app may not have a long life span anymore; MSI disagrees and tells us, "We are going to continue with MSI Afterburner."

MSI Afterburner was developed by Alexey 'Unwinder' Nicolaychuk, a Russian national who has kept the overclocking app functioning for years. Nicolaychuk is the foundation that drives Afterburner He is also involved in the development of the RivaTuner Statistics Server, which is part of the software layer.

In a post on the Guru3D forum (opens in new tab) (opens in new tab via TechPowerUp), Nicolaychuk suggests that Afterburner's development has been "semi-abandoned."

". . the MSI Afterburner project is probably dead," Nicolaychuk says. [War and politics are the reasons, which I did not mention in the MSI Afterburner development news thread, but the project has already been half-abandoned by the company for quite some time. In fact, a year is about to pass since the day MSI stopped fulfilling its obligations under the Afterburner license agreement due to the "political situation."

Nicolaychuk says that development of the app has been ongoing for the past 11 months, but that may soon be coming to an end.11]

"For the past 11 months I have tried to continue fulfilling my obligations and work on the project on my own, but the only result has been disappointment. I feel like I'm just beating a dead horse and wasting my energy on something the company no longer needs."

"Anyway, for the past 11 months I've tried to continue to do my duty and work on the project on my own, with only disappointment as the result.

"Anyway, I will continue to support myself as long as I have free time, but will probably have to stop doing that and switch to something else.

The development of the RivaTuner Statistics Server, software that is crucial to many of Afterburner's features, is essentially separate from Afterburner and will continue, Nicolaychuk said.

Nicolaychuk suggested that the problem was due to Russia's invasion of Ukraine, and we confirmed to MSI that this was the case; MSI told PC Gamer that payments were suspended due to the ongoing war in Ukraine: " Due to the RU/UA war and the associated economic restrictions, payments were withheld.

Because of the ongoing aggression, many countries and companies have pulled out of Russia or significantly reduced their presence in Russia. SWIFT, the internationally used banking system that allows for easy money transfers around the world, is restricted in Russia. Since last March, many banks in the country have been cut off from this system. However, according to a Yale (open in new tab) report updated on January 9, 2023, MicroStar International Inc (MSI) is still operating in Russia.

MSI disagrees that this is the end of the afterburner.

"We intend to fully continue with MSI Afterburner," MSI told PC Gamer. MSI is working on a solution and expects to have it resolved shortly."

Whether in the same form or something slightly different, this does not sound like the end of the Afterburner software. However, it is unclear whether that means finding a way to pay Nicolaychuk, who has been the sole administrator of the application for many years, or whether it means running another plan to develop the overclocking app entirely.