AMD apologizes for Quake Champions link in driver update

AMD has apologized for providing a link to Quake Champions in an update to its Crimson ReLive driver update application. Many users took offense at providing the link.

AMD software chief Terry Makedon apologizes on Twitter said for providing the link and saying the link is gone from the update. The link appeared as an icon on the desktop. The link to a Quake Champions page was in version 17.4.4 of the software. That version adds optimizations for Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War III, among other things.

Behind the icon was a Bit.ly link, a well-known service for shortening URLs and keeping statistics on how many people click on such a link. Those statistics are public, so anyone can see that fewer than 40,000 people have clicked on the link.

AMD doesn’t say why it put the link in the update, but it’s obvious it had a marketing reason. Makedon says in another tweet that AMD didn’t make any money from inserting the link.