Embark Studios' hit shooter The Finals has already hit 200,000 concurrent players on Steam, just 12 hours after it was released.
Data from player tracking website SteamDB shows The Finals currently has 200,213 concurrent players, a number that's been slowly but surely climbing since it first released during The Game Awards on December 7. It's therefore unlikely this number is its peak for the day, but it will likely rise even more and is set to explode over the weekend.
The Finals is a free-to-play shooter with a game show theme. "Contestants plug in to a virtual world and join teams in escalating tournaments," its synopsis reads. "Fight alongside your teammates in virtual arenas that you can alter, exploit, and even destroy."
It's perhaps unsurprising it's proven so popular so quickly, given its beta rocketed to more than 267,000 concurrent players in November 2023. The game was shadow-dropped though, meaning players weren't sitting ready to log in as soon as it released, and it's available on more than just Steam too, including PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X and S.
Despite the popularity, The Finals is currently sitting at a "Mixed" user review rating on Steam. Seemingly some changes made between the beta and actual game have put some fans off, particularly with its movement speed, while others lament connection issues as players flock the servers.
Not everything about its pre-launch reception was positive either, as Embark was criticised for using AI voice overs. Criticised by myriad voice actors and even other developers, Embark told IGN that "making games without actors isn't an end goal" and claimed it uses a mix of both recorded audio voices and audio generated via AI text to speech (TTS) tools for its games."
Ryan Dinsdale is an IGN freelance reporter. He'll talk about The Witcher all day.
