Galaxy S22 series smartphones sit on display at a Samsung Electronics store in Seoul on March 8, 2022. That day, reports said the Fair Trade Commission’s Seoul office had received a complaint accusing Samsung of false advertising over GOS, known as the Game Optimizing Service.YONHAP
Korea’s antitrust regulator fined Samsung Electronics 20.1 billion won ($15.2 million) for touting the gaming power of its Galaxy smartphones without disclosing that the phones throttled their own processors whenever a demanding game launched.
The Fair Trade Commission (FTC) found that the ads amounted to “deceptive advertising” under the Act on Fair Labeling and Advertising and issued a corrective order alongside the provisional fine, it said Tuesday. The controversy over the phones’ Game Optimizing Service (GOS) erupted more than four years ago.
Samsung said it would take legal action. The company argued that the decision is hard to understand, given that all related lawsuits — in Korea and abroad — have ended, and the complaints filed with the FTC have been withdrawn.
The ruling covers the Galaxy S21 and S22 smartphone series and the Galaxy Tab S8 tablet series. From January 2021 to March 2022, Samsung emphasized the products' gaming performance on its website, in promotional videos and at launch events including Galaxy Unpacked. Taglines included “a hard carry when playing high-end games” and “the ultimate mobile gaming experience.”
The FTC’s investigation found that launching certain high-end games triggered GOS, which capped the maximum speed of the devices’ application processors regardless of temperature. Ordinary heat management adjusts performance as a device warms up. The “individual policy” at issue instead imposed a preset ceiling as soon as a game started.
On the Galaxy S22, launching PUBG: New State cut the top CPU speed from 2.99 gigahertz to 0.94 gigahertz, about 31 percent of the original, according to the FTC. The caps applied to 82 games on the S21 series, 47 on the S22 series and eight on the Tab S8 series.
Samsung does not provide a built-in switch in the standard settings menu to permanently disable or stop GOS from launching.
Roh Tae-moon, then president and head of Samsung Electronics’ mobile communications business, unveils the Galaxy S21 series at Galaxy Unpacked 2021 on Jan. 14, 2021.SAMSUNG ELECTRONICS
“Samsung did not inform consumers that the devices’ maximum performance was uniformly capped as soon as a high-end game app was launched,” the FTC said. “It misled consumers about gaming performance and interfered with their rational purchasing decisions.”
The commission also took into account that gaming performance had become a key factor in buying expensive smart devices at the time, as demanding mobile games grew popular.
GOS became a flashpoint when the Galaxy S22 went on sale in 2022. The feature was designed to manage heat and power consumption during demanding games, but consumer anger grew after Samsung blocked even the workarounds users had relied on to bypass it as the S22 launched. In March that year, Samsung pushed out a software update that removed the limits on CPU and GPU speeds and added a mode that prioritizes performance.
The FTC’s examiner had judged the case a “serious” violation and proposed a fine of up to 64.4 billion won. The commission lowered the penalty in its final deliberation after weighing Samsung’s voluntary efforts to fix the problem.
“[Samsung] took corrective action such as lifting the cap on maximum performance, and that was reflected substantially in calculating the fine,” Lee Sun-mi, a standing commissioner at the FTC, said.
A customer looks at Galaxy S21 series smartphones, one of the device lines covered by the Fair Trade Commission’s fine, at the Samsung d’light showroom in the company’s Seocho office building in Seocho District, southern Seoul, on Jan. 29, 2021, the day the series went on sale worldwide.NEWS1
Consumers filed eight lawsuits over GOS in Korea, the United States and Israel, and all have ended without Samsung being held liable for damages. In Korea, a district court found in June last year that the ads were deceptive but dismissed the damages claims of about 2,000 plaintiffs for lack of proven losses. The appeal ended in a court-ordered mediation that became final in March, after which the plaintiffs also withdrew the complaints they had filed with the FTC.
Samsung explained Tuesday that "GOS was a feature that improved the perceived performance of games and optimized them so they could be enjoyed stably for long periods" and added it will "actively explain the company’s position through legal procedures going forward."
Jipyong, the law firm that has represented Samsung in the case, took issue with the timing.
“The sanction concerns GOS as it was four years ago, not GOS as it is today,” the firm said in a statement. “We regret that the decision singled out the settings of one point in time in software that has kept evolving through communication with consumers and deemed them deceptive advertising.”
This article was originally written in Korean and translated by a bilingual reporter with the help of generative AI tools. It was then edited by a native English-speaking editor. All AI-assisted translations are reviewed and refined by our newsroom.
