The Finals loses steam after successful launch

Embark Studio launched its very first game, The Finals, in late 2023 to great success. The game became an overnight hit in December, garnering hundreds of thousands of concurrent players on Steam alone. Now almost six months later, it appears that the game is not doing as well as its publisher had hoped.

As part of its recent financial report, Nexon, the publisher behind The Finals, confirmed that the game’s second season, which kicked off in March, created a “short-lived” increase in players but “delivered lower-than-expected retention and revenue”. Essentially, players have jumped into the game and since moved on to other things, and there aren’t enough new players coming in to make up for that gap.

Previously after the game’s hugely successful launch period, Nexon had referred to The Finals as a “franchise pillar” for the company. Currently, the publisher has its South Korea-based Live Operations team working with Embark Studios to understand the underlying causes behind the game’s dwindling popularity.

The Finals is due to enter its third season in June, with a new battle pass set to debut. It will be interesting to see if there is a notable improvement.

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KitGuru Says: The Finals' second seasonal battle pass was fairly boring as far as the cosmetics are concerned. If they want players to invest and grind, then the rewards will need to be more substantial. Of course, this is a subjective opinion, but if the unlocks earned through the Battle Pass had more ‘wow factor', then there would likely be more players sticking around to grind it out.

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