Hi all,
Samsung have broken the ability to add new devices to the entire ST platforms. I am shocked by this tbh.
Is there a way to rollback?
Nope. Not currently at least.
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No clear evidence that a firmware update is the cause?
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Not a firmware issue. You’ve been an ST user for a while now, and this outage surprises you? 
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I called them and they told me that they had released an update that had broken it. They pointed me in the direction of the update status page.
They broke all their TV’s integration with ST (globally) as well by doing the same thing. I was raged back then too.
Their quality control processes are shocking.
There’s no way to rollback hub firmware updates, but in this case, it’s more likely an update on the cloud side. And again, no way for individual users to rollback. 
They do unannounced and undocumented cloud side changes all the time, and we frequently don’t even hear about it unless it breaks something. This has always been true. Annoying, but true.
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No it doesn’t surprise me. It still annoys me just as much as before though.
Most consumer tech products do not offer a rollback mechanism.
It’s not an optimal situation, but when “the industry” sets a de facto expectation, it becomes less reasonable to expect Samsung / SmartThings to buck the trend - even in the best interests of their Customers.
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Most (overwhelming majority) of people do not even know what “firmware” is.
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Firmware Version is sometimes tightly related with the Platform (cloud, database, etc.) and App. Since the Platform is shared by all customers, permitting old firmware is impractical.
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Operating Systems (phones, Windows, MacOS…) generally allow short deferrals of updates, but, to minimize the possibility of bot networks and optimize overall customer experience, updates cannot be rejected forever - except via hacks. Rollback mechanisms are usually not available (not sure if “Windows System Restore” is an exception - though it is pretty buried, regardless).
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Sure, but most Home automation systems actually do, and have for a few years. Smartthings has always been an outlier in this regard. So much so that went homey was released without a back up and restore, the reviews were pretty savage on this point:
Athom Homey REVIEW - One Home Automation Controller to RULE THEM ALL! – Vesternet
There’s also several glaring omissions in functionality, some of which we’ve already mentioned which maybe aren’t so serious, but others that would almost seem crazy to be missing - for example there’s no way currently to do a backup and restore of your Homey system! So if your Homey suffers a hardware fault or some other failure and you need to get a replacement, or perhaps you’d like to revert to a configuration “checkpoint” before something started going wrong, you have ZERO capability in this area.
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Come on guys, even the FREE open-source non-commercial Smart Home software like Domoticz has that functionality, but Homey doesn’t!
SmartThings isn’t The only system to lack this functionality (wink doesn’t have it either), but a lot of others, including vera and Insteon do.
Most consumer technology doesn’t have back up and restore because it doesn’t need it. You buy a DVD player or a microwave or even a motion sensor light and it keeps working even if the company goes out of business. Until It physically breaks.
But something with cloud services is different. There are ongoing updates. But many of the ones with ongoing updates also have a restore function. And that’s also true of home automation systems.
Not true whatsoever. In response to tgauchat:
Most (overwhelming majority) of people do not even know what “firmware” is. True, but it doesn’t make it OK for Samsung to break their products like they do.
Most consumer tech products DO allow you to control how you update the product AND give you the option to revert the change. SmartThings force the changes upon you, breaks their (your) product and there is no rollback option. Fact.
I can choose to apply updates to my phone or not. Its right there in the settings menu. If I apply an update and it breaks, on an iphone you can hold the CTRL button then click update and it will give you the option to manually rollback to a previous IOS. Here see all the old IOS versions available on the apple website:
With Windows I control if I want to update and how / when windows updates are applied via group policy. Whether I choose never or on a controlled and tested release schedule its my choice. I also have the option to remove the offending update that caused the issue and therefore end up with a working system rather than a BROKEN system. This is very important when you are the systems administrator of 100’s of thousands of IT systems that run critical infrastucture for your country. Its also very important if you are the consumer of a badly managed product such as SmartThings.
And here is a quick search for a cheap little IP cam. Look wouldn’t you know it. They show you the verison history of their firmware release and you can choose which one you want!!!
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I hate to break it to you, but your IOS example is showing off your ignorance over IOS upgrades/downgrades. While the software is available once Apple stops signing a version you cant downgrade to it and Apple is notorious about not allowing previous versions of IOS to be installed about 48 hrs after the new version is released.
Ultimately if having control over what version of firmware you run or not being dependent on the cloud is important to you this is the wrong place to complain, cause it won’t fix anything. You can however put you money where you’re mouth is and switch to Hubitat.
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If an update breaks my Phone or PC, I really, really need it. Much more so than my smart home functionality, frankly.
So yes - I definitely try my best to disable auto-updates (I don’t even enable auto-update of Android Apps); but I am not the typical consumer.
Well, TBH, I was very savage pre-release of SmartThings (i.e., in comments on the Kickstarter Campaign). And yes - SmartThings has consistently dismissed the concerns of myself and other customers … even as of 6 years ago.
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The point is that I have the option to downgrade my phone if I want to in order to keep it working. And I have done before because I wanted to. The same applies to everything else that is capable of recieving software or firmare updates.
What phone?
I can’t find any downgrade option on my Samsung Galaxy S8.
My point stands is that the “overall consumer tech” industry has set the precedent here. Should smart home do better? Perhaps; though I’d argue this is a problem with everything that auto-updates.