THE FINALS ends 2023 with widespread cheater ban—hits innocent players by mistake

THE FINALS developer Embark Studios recently issued a new ban to block cheaters from playing, but multiple players who claim to be innocent say they have been affected too.

Said ban took place on Dec. 31, right before New Year’s, according to The Verge’s Tom Warren. “Looks like it has hit a lot of folks who don’t cheat, including a number of Twitch streamers,” he said, theorizing there’s a “false positive” somewhere. Essentially, it’s suspected certain players who have performed well have falsely been labeled as cheaters.

Affected players naturally aired their grievances on social media and raised awareness, with the ban scuppering their plans to enjoy THE FINALS on New Year’s Eve. From the sound of things, false bans are still occurring as recently as Jan. 1. One Reddit user, Strawieberry, said they were banned for seemingly no reason: “After playing a few matches with friends, we decided to flair up our characters and buy some skins. I put 20 euros into the game and we hop into another match. One minute into it I get kicked, unfortunately. They leave the match and we try again, I fail to connect to the match. I restart my game just in case and find out I have been banned.”

Fortunately, some players have since had their bans lifted, such as Viscose on X (formerly Twitter), who also shared clips of their gameplay. It turns out they’re good at THE FINALS, which may lend credence to the idea that highly skilled players are being mistaken for cheaters.

But not everyone is convinced these bans are as illegitimate as players claim. Several X users responded to Warren’s initial post accusing Twitch streamers of cheating regularly and crying fowl after being caught, though no exact names were given.

At the time of writing, Embark Studios hasn’t issued any formal statement about the bans; it didn’t even announce it would be happening. So, players can do nothing but speculate. Hopefully, things will be smoother come the next ban wave because you know cheaters will always come back.

False bans aren’t an issue unique to THE FINALS. Every online multiplayer game has seen people claim to have been unfairly prevented from playing. Back in October, Counter-Strike 2 wound up banning some players just for updating their PC drivers.

Just last month, Embark Studios said there was some kind of issue hampering its ability to ban cheaters, but it was close to a solution. Following this recent debacle, though, it seems the studio still has a lot of work to do to ensure only cheaters are banned.