Embark Studio’s latest creation, The Finals, continues to ride the waves of euphoria, boasting a consistently robust player base. However, the game’s success has been overshadowed by a persistent surge of cheaters, a predicament not uncommon within the region of free-to-play first-person shooters.
Despite the implementation of the Easy Anti-Cheat engine, The Finals has become a breeding ground for malicious players, rendering the ranked mode virtually unplayable. The upper echelons of the rankings now face the looming threat of being overrun by notorious hackers. This dire situation has persisted for weeks, with fingers pointed squarely at the Chinese player base, as evidenced by a flurry of complaints flooding platforms such as Reddit.
Numerous users have decried encountering peculiar matchmaking scenarios, facing opponents with Mandarin-character usernames exhibiting inexplicable movements, unnaturally precise shooting, and an air of invincibility.
These complaints underscore a pervasive problem: the significant likelihood of encountering cheaters in every match, which severely compromises the gaming experience for both novices and seasoned players. In response, calls to segregate servers by region – Chinese, Asian, European, and American – have gained momentum, with the goal of mitigating the rampant interactions with cheaters.
However, the development team has rebuffed these demands, dismissing the notion that cheaters are exclusive to one region as xenophobic. Some cheaters deliberately adopt Chinese usernames not as an indicator of origin but as a strategic move to complicate reporting by non-native speakers.
Dusty Gustafsson, the community lead, acknowledged a “technical issue” hampering the efficient banning of undesirable players. He assured the gaming community that the team is on the brink of resolving this bug and has commenced fortifying their anti-cheat measures.
As the specter of cheating looms large, The Finals’ development team remains committed to addressing the issue with urgency, anticipating a resolution by early 2024. Recognizing the peril faced by similar games plagued by cheaters, Embark Studio is steadfast in its determination to tackle this challenge head-on to retain its player base.
