In a nutshell: MSI's year to forget continues. The company's president and CEO, Sheng-Chang "Charles" Chiang, died in July, and now it's been reported that a fire broke out at it's major manufacturing plant in Kunshan, China, over the weekend.
A Reddit post titled "MSI HQ in China apparently just went up in flames There goes my 3080" shows a six-second clip of what looks like a major fire at the plant in Kunshan, Jiangsu Province---MSI's actual headquarters are located in Taiwan
MSI HQ in China apparently just went up in flames There goes my 3080 from r/pcmasterrace
The plant is a major location for MSI. Opened in 2003, the 750-acre location consists of two factories and an R&D center.
The good news is that nobody was hurt during the incident. MSI has released a statement claiming the fire was relatively small, though it looks quite large in the video, and that production was not affected. But the company is likely underplaying the situation---a factory fire of this apparent size would almost certainly see production lines temporarily shut down, and even the smallest delay can lead to supply issues.
Four months ago, the tech industry was shocked after MSI CEO Chiang died following a fall from the seventh floor of a building in Taiwan capital Taipei. He joined the company in 1999 as Vice President of Engineering, moving to general manager of the Desktop Platform Business Division in 2010 and finally taking the CEO position in January 2019.
Everyone knows that trying to get hold of one of the RTX 30-series graphics cards is proving an almost impossible task right now unless you're willing to pay a fortune for one on eBay---AMD's Ryzen 5000 series appears to be experiencing the same situation. If the fire slowed down production even slightly, finding an RTX 30xx from MSI could become even harder.