Samsung Electronics has announced plans to challenge a tentative 20 billion won fine imposed by the Fair Trade Commission (FTC) over deceptive advertising allegations related to the Game Optimizing Service (GOS) on Galaxy smartphones, stating it will pursue legal action including a lawsuit.

In an official statement released today (October 27), Samsung said, "It is a difficult decision to understand, given that domestic and international lawsuits have all concluded and the FTC complaints filed by the participating plaintiffs have also been withdrawn," adding, "We will actively explain our position through future legal procedures."

Samsung's stance is that optimization features like GOS are standard methods commonly used by global smartphone manufacturers, and that no overseas competition authorities have sanctioned them or judged them to be deceptive advertising.

Jipyong, the law firm representing Samsung in the FTC case, also refuted the commission's judgment.

Jipyong argued, "GOS is an optimization feature designed to improve the user's gaming experience," adding, "Managing heat and maintaining performance are common challenges faced by all smart device manufacturers, and GOS is the result of Samsung Electronics' deliberation on this matter."

It further stated, "It is difficult to accept that a feature adjusting device operation for the optimal user experience was judged as deceptive advertising simply because the specific optimization operation method was not included in the advertising content."

The firm also pointed out, "The FTC only mentions the ratio (%) of the upper limit setting compared to the AP's maximum clock speed, but did not reveal the impact this setting had on actual gaming experiences, such as frames per second."

Previously, when launching the Galaxy S21 and S22 series and the Galaxy Tab S8 series between January 2021 and March 2022, Samsung made the installation of GOS mandatory and prevented users from deleting it.

After controversy arose that GOS artificially limited device performance, Samsung released a software update in March 2022 to lift the limits on the maximum operating speeds of the central processing unit (CPU) and graphics processing unit (GPU).

However, consumers filed a damages lawsuit that same month, claiming they suffered damages because Samsung advertised as if providing peak performance without notifying them that GOS degraded device performance.

Nonetheless, prior to the FTC's penalty, eight related lawsuits conducted across three countries—South Korea, the United States, and Israel—had all been concluded, and the complaints filed by the plaintiffs with the FTC were also withdrawn.

The first-instance court in the domestic lawsuit acknowledged that Samsung engaged in deceptive labeling and advertising that could mislead consumers, but did not recognize liability for damages.

Subsequently, the Seoul High Court concluded the case through a compulsory mediation in February of this year.

As no objections were raised among the approximately 1,700 plaintiffs and mediation participants, the decision was finalized in March.

(File Photo: Yonhap News)