The demand for a fresh shooter is there. The Finals is proof of that. Two weeks after its launch, the development team jumped on Twitter/X to celebrate the 10 million player milestone.
“To all you 10 million contestants (!) who have entered the arena since launch – a huge THANK YOU!”
The Finals’ success isn’t a surprise to fans. About a month before release, the game held an open beta that saw more than 7.5 million players try it out. It resonated with many of you as the number of players quickly surpassed what the devs saw in the open beta.
The Finals first piqued my interest when I saw the team developing it. Embark Studios has ex-DICE developers responsible for Battlefield among its staff. And the destruction seen in The Finals shows they embraced the Battlefield destruction of old in their new game.
And while Embark Studios is following the free-to-play model we often see these days, they are taking a different approach with how they communicate what’s coming next. For now, the dev team will not publish a roadmap of what’s coming.
“We better hold off with that sort of stuff and make promises we can keep,” The Finals’ creative director, Gustav Tilleby, recently told Axios.
I imagine this lets the team respond more quickly to the community instead of being locked into a particular feature they promised months ago. Embark has been quick to respond to issues with multiple hotfixes and a patch since the game’s launch earlier this month.
How big is The Finals?
Ten million players is one hell of a milestone, but let’s take a deeper look. On Steam, The Finals surged to a concurrent peak of 242,399 players shortly after launch. The game has settled to daily concurrent peaks of around 130,000 players two weeks after launch. That’s enough to keep The Finals in the top 10 and ahead of Call of Duty.
We can also get a general idea of how it’s doing on Xbox. The ‘Most Played’ chart is usually updated only once weekly, so keep that in mind. Right now, it’s sitting at #16 on the chart. That’s behind Destiny 2 but ahead of games like Red Dead Redemption 2 and Forza Horizon 5. It’s not too shabby for a game that’s not a part of an established franchise.
What is Embark Studios’ next game?
Work will continue on The Finals to try and keep this momentum going, but I also expect the hype for the team’s other game, ARC Raiders, to only grow now that folks know they can deliver a good game.
ARC Raiders is described as a PvPvE extraction shooter set on a future Earth, overrun by dangerous mechs.