C. Scott Brown / Android Authority
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TL;DR
- Samsung found itself in trouble a few years ago for throttling phone performance when certain games were running.
- The company has already faced legal challenges over the throttling, including a class-action lawsuit.
- Now the Korea Fair Trade Commission is getting involved, issuing Samsung what amounts to a multi-million-dollar fine.
Have you ever felt like your new smartphone didn’t live up to expectations? Manufacturers sure seem to promise the moon with each new generation, and inevitably, not everything that’s being hyped is going to nail the landing. And while that’s far from uncommon, how often is it that we actually see a phone maker experience consequences for over-selling a device? That’s a far rarer occurrence, but one we’re actually seeing play out now for Samsung.
Today’s story actually got started a few years ago, with one of those scandals that seems to keep popping back up over and over: chip throttling and game performance. Sometimes, that’s a case of a company trying to inflate benchmark figures, but this one was actually the opposite. Back during the era of the Galaxy S22, Samsung found itself in the hot seat for limiting performance in order to avoid overheating.
We already heard about a class-action lawsuit Galaxy owners in South Korea pursued against the company, and now we’re learning that the Korea Fair Trade Commission (KFTC) is also fining Samsung over the incident (Thanks: Dylan H).
The KFTC has levied a 20.1 billion won (~$15.1 million) fine against the Galaxy manufacturer, citing exactly the same reasons the suit was brought against it: Samsung’s Game Optimizing Service would automatically run when certain popular games were started, and reduce phone performance to as low as 30% of what should be possible. As a result, gamers did not experience the “ultimate mobile gaming experience” promised to them in Samsung’s advertising.
Considering the scale of Samsung’s operations, even $15 million doesn’t amount to more than just a slap on the wrist — but we’re still impressed for an advertising complaint to both get this kind of attention and result in some actual consequences for the company.
According to Seoul Economic Daily, Samsung emphasizes that “no court has found that consumers suffered harm because of the advertising.” Harm or not, we’re just happy that Samsung ultimately gave Galaxy owners the option to disable the performance-killing Game Optimizing Service on their devices.
