Do HDMI to VGA cables actually work as advertised?

I recently bought this HDMI to VGA cable to use with a computer which only has HDMI output:

However, it doesn’t work and now I realize that an active device is needed to perform the conversion. My question is basically: Is the cable a fake product or are some graphics cards able output a VGA signal through the HDMI output?

Edit: By "output a VGA signal through the HDMI output" I mean switching from HDMI output to VGA output with a hardware setting.