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The Finals soars over 200k concurrent players after surprise release

After Embark Studio surprise launched The Finals during The Game Awards, the shooter's player count has exploded over 200k on Steam.

Dark-skinned character with white face paint and dark leather jacket.

The Finals has soared in popularity within hours of its launch, pulling in over 200,000 concurrent players on Steam. Across multiple beta tests in the past, the title has been known to pop off in player count numbers, and it’s likely to only get bigger as the weekend rolls in.

During The Game Awards on Thursday, December 7, developer Embark Studio dropped a surprise full release for The Finals. Players have been eagerly waiting for the FPS game for months. Made by former Battlefield developers, The Finals is viewed as a breath of fresh air among free-to-play shooter fanatics, with destruction-based features and high-octane gunplay. The developer has been vocal about improvements throughout its development, and already, The Finals has an impressive player base judging from recent numbers.

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According to SteamDB, a site dedicated to calculating data on Steam games, The Finals has a 24-hour peak of 200,677 players. That number was smashed in under 12 hours of the game being live on the PC platform. As of this article’s writing, about 153,205 players are online in The Finals, which may spike up during the weekend.

Despite its growing fanbase, The Finals is sitting at ‘Mixed’ reviews on Steam. Some negative reviewers say the shooter title is good, but are unsatisfied with the current movement speed. One reviewer states that “Movement speed [has been] nerfed across the board, everything feels very clunky and sluggish, pls fix.”

According to these players, the movement in previous betas was far better and smoother. Now, the game’s parkour mechanics and overall movement feel “extremely sluggish,” with one user on Steam claiming the change “does not match with the tone of the game.”

The Finals team hasn’t addressed the change in movement speed after its sudden release, among other issues reported by players involving poor optimization and game crashes. Only time will tell when or if any of this gets improved.

In the meantime, check out our list of the best The Finals classes and all the current The Finals battle pass rewards in The Finals if you’re curious. 

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