THE FINALS dev responds to cheating complaints: ‘We don’t want to region lock’

Embark Studios finally shared its stance on the highly requested region lock feature to contain cheaters in THE FINALS.

On THE FINALS Discord server on Dec. 17, community manager Momo said players shouldn’t expect the game to region-lock China despite requests from the community. “Isn’t a personal opinion, it’s a company decision,” they said, explaining that cheaters are located in all regions and the devs see a “good chunk of them using Chinese names as in a copium method to be harder to be reported.”

The community manager added that blaming the existence of cheaters on a specific country is considered racism and xenophobia and will not be tolerated within the community. On the other hand, in a separate message, Momo said there’s a plan on how to deal with things but it might take a little while and asked players to bear with them.

Since the open beta back on Oct. 29, players have been actively asking the devs to region-lock China specifically because of the sheer number of alleged cheaters in the country. As one player pointed out, THE FINALS’ leaderboard is filled with these names and Embark needs to officially acknowledge and address this issue. Another player suggested the developer implement ping lock instead, as THE FINALS is “supposed to be a competitive game.”

While the response regarding region lock has left many players dissatisfied and can even be seen as a slightly tone-deaf reaction, it ultimately doesn’t matter what Embark does to deal with cheaters in THE FINALS, as long as it works. If it doesn’t, THE FINALS may face the bane of an early FPS game and struggle to retain its players after an otherwise successful launch.