The Finals certainly made a splash when it launched, hitting Steam after a successful beta. But now, just a month and a half-later, it’s seen a serious drop in interest. The game’s Steam player base has gone from hundreds of thousands to tens-of-thousands, a drop of 83%.
Could The Finals be in trouble? It’s not great news for developer Embark Studios that, despite its initial success, this FPS multiplayer game has lost a huge chunk of its audience.
The Finals launched with over 200,000 Steam active players and peaked shortly after with 242,619. Its servers were even straining to handle the load. But, over the course of two months, it’s steadily dropped to a player base of around 50,000.
The game is also on console, so the Steam figures (via SteamDB) don’t represent the game’s entire player count. But free-to-player multiplayer games, lives or die on their players, and you can bet that Embark is having conversations about this decline, given that ten million players have tried the game.
So what’s happening? The Steam reviews, past and present are ‘mostly positive’, so it’s not as if Embark has thrown in some ill-advised, player-offending change.
Poring over the game’s Reddit, players have a selection of grumbles, some complaining that the matchmaking is sub par, others disappointed by the lack of modes. But it’s not wall-to-wall discontentment, and the game has just had a new mode added.
It may be that, with its newness wearing off, The Finals will end up with a stable player base. Whether that player base is enough to make the game commercially viable, is another question, and if that figure keeps dropping, The Finals could be in trouble.
If you’re one of the game’s faithful, here are the best classes in The Finals. Or if you’re ready to look elsewhere, check out the best solo and multiplayer FPS games.
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