The Finals, Embark Studios’ first-person arena shooter, has managed to hit a ten-month high peak player count on Steam amid the delivery of the game’s eleventh season. The game has pushed up the charts on all platforms, but it’s on PC that the player numbers are the most visible.
This is all because the new season, dubbed ‘Galaxy Masters’, represents one hell of an overhaul for the game, a free-to-play shooter released in December 2023.
The Finals Goes All The Way With Season 11
The Finals walked so ARC Raiders could run, but now, while ARC Raiders is faltering, The Finals is finding fresh success with the delivery of an all-new season. The extraction adventure title that Embark Studios released last year is seeing more negative sentiments surface every day, but The Finals has managed to soar of late.
At the heart of Galaxy Masters sits a new arena, Galaxy Estates. It’s a diverse, vibrant map with multiple points of interest and stunning verticality mechanics, such as anti-gravity columns and more destruction opportunities than ever before.
This season also brings a new and packed trio of battle passes: free, premium, and ultimate, allowing users of all shapes, sizes, and budgets to earn some rewards and boosts. And for any new players entering The Finals, there’s a fresh tutorial waiting to help them learn the ropes, as this isn’t your run-of-the-mill shooter.
Embark Studios has also added bots to The Finals, effectively ticking the PvE box and allowing users to matchmake computer-controlled enemies.
Melee attacks have been reworked, the in-game contextual ping system has been upgraded, ranked has undergone some important changes, and the game’s many maps and core mechanics have been tweaked.
And all that is before we start talking about the faster progression features introduced with the new season, or the cosmetics available for purchase, or the in-game event that bridges the gap between The Finals and ARC Raiders.
This has all managed to boost The Finals’ player count, at least on Steam, to levels not seen in the last ten months. In the last 24 hours, The Finals hit 28,320 concurrent players on Steam; the last time it managed to sit higher than that was in September 2025, with the launch of season eight.
Have you managed to jump back into The Finals? Let us know what you think about the changes on the Insider Gaming Discord server.
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Grant has been gaming for 30+ years and in the industry for 10+. You'll probably find him playing a post-apocalyptic game or an extraction shooter somewhere.
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