Samsung has been under the scanner of South Korea's Fair Trade Commission (FTC) for the past four years over the Game Optimization Service (GOS) issue affecting the Galaxy S22 and Galaxy Tab S8, and the company is now facing potential fines of at least $24 million.
What is the GOS controversy related to the Galaxy S22?
When Samsung launched the Galaxy S22 series in 2022, users discovered that the Xclipse 920 GPU inside the Exynos 2200 chip dropped to less than half of its peak performance capability under sustained workloads, such as long gaming sessions.
In such scenarios, Samsung artificially reduced GPU performance to prevent the Exynos chip from overheating.
Following the controversy, roughly 1,800 Galaxy users filed a class-action lawsuit in South Korea. A Seoul court ruled that Samsung's advertisements for the Galaxy S22 series could mislead consumers into expecting peak performance, while they will actually get less than half of claimed performance in the long run.
The court initially dismissed monetary claims because proving direct financial damages proved difficult.
Samsung said GOS follows a standard, industry-wide practice to manage heat and power consumption
Samsung maintained that GOS is a standard, industry-wide optimization measure necessary for managing heat and power consumption, arguing that performance is severely affected in only a select few heavy games like Genshin Impact.
South Korean investigators rejected Samsung's defense that GOS and performance throttling are standard thermal management practices, defining them instead as “uniform mandatory measures” that artificially restrict top-tier hardware performance.
Severe backlash surrounding performance throttling in Exynos chips led Samsung to temporarily drop its in-house processors from flagship phones, and the Galaxy S23 series relied exclusively on Qualcomm Snapdragon chips.
Korean FTC said Samsung engaged in deceptive advertising
The FTC has determined that Samsung's marketing and advertisements for the Galaxy S22 series constitute deceptive advertising, assessing the issue as a serious violation. Officials have proposed a corrective order to prevent Samsung from concealing, downplaying, or omitting maximum performance limits in future product advertisements.
The FTC is now scheduled to formally deliberate the case at a plenary meeting on October 14, 2026, to make final decisions on legal violations and official sanctions. Samsung could face legal fines ranging from KRW 32.18 billion ($24 million) to KRW 64.36 billion ($48 million).
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