The Finals Is A Breakout Hit, But Still Has A Cheaters Problem

The Finals is an FPS game that was released on December 7, 2023 and being free-to-play has its pitfalls because it still has a cheater problem. Cheaters being a serious issue has been a topic of conversation since the beta, especially after the game became super popular due to its innovative fast-paced gameplay.

The game has achieved a 24-hour peak of 242,619 players with 118,792 currently playing at the time of writing. But the cheaters’ issue has led to a lot of disgruntled players, as they are facing aim botters “3 tapping with a revolver across the map” as well as a silenced pistol app that had “insane TTK.”

When you Google ‘The Finals cheats’, you will find multiple websites that give you hacks like aimbot, wallhacks, ESP and more. The sites blatantly claim that even if you are completely new to the game, using their hacks will help you kill players that have thousands of hours in FPS gaming.’

Back in October 28, 2023 the account @AntiCheatPD tweeted that The Finals has already been targeted by huge P2C vendors.

The new FPS title called @reachthefinals has already been targeted by huge P2C vendors. It's not long until it's riddled with cheaters. I hope the devs at "TheFinals" have thought about anti-cheat measures when building this game, or it's just going to be another title ruined by… pic.twitter.com/KsalycwPeW

— Anti-Cheat Police Department 🕵️ (@AntiCheatPD) October 27, 2023

Here are some posts by players sharing their experiences of playing with cheaters and also requesting the devs for better anti-cheat.

PLEASE!!! Save Asia servers before it’s too late, you know what country needs to be region locked
byu/nosc-omial inthefinals

I lost the interest to continue tha round when I realised my random teammate is a hacker.
byu/SabeelDx inthefinals

If you’re going to cheat, please don’t make it obvious…
byu/ChillyHD inthefinals

Been loving the game, but of course it has to be ruined by an influx of cheaters. Please get better anticheat ASAP.
byu/Zedaso inthefinals

Easy Anti-cheat does nothing.
byu/frenchenglishfish inthefinals

Any chance of better Anti cheat
byu/CaptainRisky_97 inthefinals

Embark has also sent out a statement related to cheating in the game, a month ago.

Embark (Ekko’s) Statement on cheating
byu/TheSpaceFace inthefinals

Does The Finals Use EAC?

EAC or Easy Anti Cheat is a system that helps games detect and prevent cheating in games and Embark does use it but there are additional systems in place as well. The other systems won’t be revealed, to deter cheaters from creating more hacks.

How to Report Cheaters in The Finals

Follow these steps to report cheaters or hackers:

• Go to the “Friends and Parties” tab at the top right of the game menu, next to the gear icon.
• Head to the “Recently Played With” section and find the player you want to report.
• Open the player’s profile and choose “Report Player” from the options.
• Select the reason why you want to report them.
• Give any additional information that can help the support team.

What is considered cheating in The Finals?

Embark Studios has created a page about the anti-cheat FAQs for The Finals. The official description states “Generally speaking, all actions, inactions, codes, modifications, etc. that give one player or a group of players an unfair advantage in the game are considered cheating. ”

This includes “account selling, sharing or boosting, aimbots, wallhacks, camera hacks, extra sensory perception (ESP), exploits of bugs and glitches to gain unfair advantage, farming, griefing, lag switching, macros, modded controllers, radar hacks, removal hacks, scripting, speed hacks, triggerbots and win trading.”

Source: Steam

Yes, The Finals is a free-to-play game and it’s good, but to get good at it, one has to spend hours grinding, while these cheaters get away with using hacks. It’s crucial for the longevity of an online multiplayer game that this is addressed and dealt with on a high priority. The player count is growing but maintaining that count is where Embark’s challenge lies.

As you can see in the Reddit posts shown above, a large amount of cheaters are appearing with Chinese names due to which players are asking to region-lock China, but it could also be cheaters from other regions using a Chinese name to confuse others. The devs have to quickly figure out a way to ensure that the game stays fun for every player trying it out.

Source: Steam

At the time of writing, The Finals has climbed up to #7 in Steam’s list of Most Played Games by current players, beating Baldur’s Gate 3, TF2, Path of Exile, and Rust.