I just read the news about smartthings charging for API access starting in October and I'm fucking PISSED. I just recently bought a Samsung washer/dryer combo and an over the range microwave. One of the major factors in the decision of those purchases was the ability to use Home Assistant with them. There is no way in fucking HELL I'm paying 5 bucks a months for a few TTS notifications and controlling the range hood light. I'm already decided on the fact that Samsung will never get another cent from me, but what are the chances that there will be some sort of workaround to this?
I know, I know. Buy only LOCALLY operated stuff. Should've trusted my gut on that. NEVER AGAIN. I think we should organize a review bomb of the Samsung site and all Samsung vendors. Too bad legal action is out of the question.
Contact the company who sold them to you and politely ask them for a full refund for removing functions you paid for. Functions you specifically chose these particular devices for (i.e. free access to your devices' sensors and control). Let them know that they will be responsible for transport fees if the devices have to be returned and no restocking fee may be applied.
Will this get you a refund or your free access back?
Unlikely ("you did not read this fine print that says 'we can do what we want'"), but it will get the message across in strong terms.
Normally I would see that as a logical approach. Unfortunately, I bought these from Bestbuy Canada, and I can tell you from previous experience that I would be completely wasting my time. They are basically nothing more than a pickup zone/delivery company and after your stuff hits the door, they tell you to take any issues up with the manufacturer.
Then do that. Send the request to the manufacturer.
A few returns. and they will be asking the question 'why' at the corporate level.
Nobody wants returns when your business model relies in shoving boxes out the door as fast as possible with least amount of friction, high volume with small margins being the primary objective. Customer support is an overhead they don't want to be involved in.
Money doesn't talk, it shouts!
Honestly they said that when they dropped the old Groovy interface..
Unfortunately the number of users who will consider themselves slighted will be barely a rounding error. (St used to call them 'advanced users' on the back side in the ST forums.)
Id expect the real venom to be on the ST community board. But it's jot nearly as bad as I expected... Unfortunately.
I expect them to get away with it and lose a few clients in the process and they won't care much unfortunately is my bet. The numbers were calculated, just like they were when they cast off groovy. The decision at that time is they saved more money than they lost by killing the old platform bleeding them dry. I suspect there's something similar at play here.
But surely if you don't update the software on the device it won't change, or is Smarthings cloud based?
I see this happening to a lot of devices as time goes on, so many companies have been able to fund there cloud services due to the number of sales, now that a lot of users have the kit the manufacturers get to a point they can't sell enough. We have seen it with cameras, it will happen with a lot of other stuff once they have you locked into their systems.
It's not just existing cloud services but "enshitification" by moving from ownership to subscription, centralised control and data collection, fleecing owners etc.
So beware. Yesterday my perfectly functional for years Canon printer asked me for the first time ever if I wanted to download a firmware update.
What kind of evil awaited me if any, I don't know. No no way will I update because no business can be trusted any more. Even if they explicitly say, they can and and do change the rules routinely when they see profits.
People are too trusting of big business and until that changes they will exploit that.
It does seem you can subscribe to anything these days. A friend of mine was about to spend £4 a month on some app that would connect to his car OBD11, and tell him of any issues his car may have. He was going to get one for each of his 3 cars. I told him his dashboard would alert him to any issues the second they happen. And if he needs more advice I would happily help him out.
I worked for years in R&D for consumer electronics and way back in the mid 90's we were trying to work out ways to get subscribers locked into the system. It was difficult back then, but it is the norm now.
The only good thing is with a bit of work there is always a free alternative.
Cloud based with a client service hub.
You cannot bow out of St firmware or your hub becomes a paperweight until you update to current.
So yeah. No choice on client end...
I have no hub, just a Smartthings account. Not sure what the microwave does when I'm not looking, but the washer/dryer updates fairly routinely. I could choose to skip the updates "until later", but I could see that becoming a major pain if every time I want to do a load of laundry it's nagging me.
It's times like this that I wish I were a skilled hacker and I could just sniff the traffic from the machine then build some sort of false server that it would report to, thinking that it's phoning home.
Failing that, just find the personal email address of the person responsible for this decision and rally up an army of fellow Home Assistant nerds to email bomb their inbox for a few months.
A fake Server exist for Miele
Where's Claude Fable 5 when you need it? 
Itll be back soon - all the public services like AMZ Bedrock that host it commercially and the Claude harness are showing the markers of the model being restored iminently as of yesterday. ...but completely off topic.
...let's just say it will take a LOT more than a fake server, you can try - but I strongly suspect you're not reverse engineering your way around it. You'l lbe needing a quantum computer to reverse encryption... - not Claude. Code signing exists
One of these days I’m going to disassemble my dryer and washing machine.
I’ll either hack the uart (between mobo and wifi), if there is any.
Otherwise I just add some relay over the buttons (and use an esphome)….
I left Smartthings over 6 years ago for multiple reasons including consistently bad hub hardware & the customer service once Samsung bought them. I moved happily to HA. I still have a few Smartthings plugs but that's about it. Good luck!
I'm tempted to do something similar, but one of the key selling points of this machine was its beautiful aesthetic. The thing looks like a frickin' monolith -- and I love that there is no visible branding on it whatsoever -- just a sleek, black touchscreen that looks like a large embedded mobile phone. If it wasn't for this API stupidity I'd have been reasonably happy with it, but this money-grubbing behavior is hostile to their existing customers and I feel betrayed. I purposely stuck with Samsung for all of my major appliances and I can promise that it will be the last time I ever buy another Samsung product. Even my damn phone is a Samsung. 
Someone will probably, eventually, reverse-engineer the SmartThings Mobile App (if it hasn't already been done) as a custom component to access their API that way and avoid the "personal project development" charge of $5/mo if at all possible.
In other news, LG for the win. LG ThinQ may be cloud-based, but at least they are all-in for HA friendliness and development.
Never count on Samsung to do the right thing.
I highly doubt that; many tried and so far nobody managed.