The Finalsdeveloper, Embark Studios, has released a big new update for the free-to-play shooter, adding a new game mode, features, balance changes, and more. With Season 7 ofThe Finalsnow at the mid-way point, Embark is keeping the gameplay loop fresh by introducing a unique new mode known as Super Cashball, which is unlike anything players have seen before. There’s also plenty of new balance adjustments and bug fixes that players will want to check out before they jump back in.

The release of Season 7 seems to have been a big success for developer Embark Studios, asThe Finalsplayer count is way up on Steam. Now, to keep things rolling and players coming back for more, the studio has released a big mid-season update for fans to jump into. The patch is available to download now on PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC, and adds a new game mode, a new spin the wheel feature, and plenty of balance adjustments and bug fixes. According to the official patch notes, which can be found further down this article, all three Archetypes have had some serious changes, while four different Gadgets have also been adjusted.

Embark Studios often keeps things fresh by adding a variety of different game modes for fans to check out, such as Power Shift, which wasadded toThe Finalsback in Season 2. Now, the studio is adding Super Cashball into the mix. This 5v5 game mode requires players to work as a team to throw the Cashball into the opposing goal to score points. There are even numerous ways to increase the points when scoring, such as by passing the Cashball to teammates or by charging the ball up before scoring. Super Cashball is split into two five-minute halves with a short halftime in between.

The Finals Mid-Season Update 7.6.0 Patch Notes

QUEUE UP FOR SUPER CASHBALL!

Hit the locker room Contestants, it’s time to suit up for SUPER CASHBALL!

Welcome to the fast-paced, high-stakes 5v5 mode where you work as a team to throw the Cashball into the opposing goal! You can score even bigger by passing the ball between teammates, charging the ball and making it worth even more points! Earn up to 3 points in a single goal with a fully charged Cashball! A pass counts even if the ball touches the ground, so long as the next person who grabs it is on the same team.

The match is split into two five-minute halves with a short halftime in between. At the final buzzer, if the ball is still in the air, it can still score, so those last-second throws are very much in play. Every second counts in CA$HBALL STADIUM.

Looking for a comeback? Score in the last 30 seconds to get an extra 30 seconds on the timer! If a tie, the first team that reached the tied score will win.

Choose your position wisely!Loadouts are locked and the best team has a balance:

Medium Build: Playmaker

This position will escort the ball, pluck it out of the sky with the Winch, and carry the whole team across the field!

Loadout:

Light Build: Strikers

Deadly with the Dagger and fast on their feet. They can subdue opponents, and get across the Stadium in a flash!

Heavy Build: Enforcer

Lock down the ball, defend the goal and send the opposing team back to their own territory, usually in coin form.

Each goal has a penalty zone around it, and if a player from the opposing team steps inside, they get Glitched. A Glitched player can’t pick up or carry the ball, nor can they use Gadgets or Specializations. So watch where you step and don’t get baited into the enemy zone!

Success in SUPER CASHBALL is all about teamwork.Pass to charge, watch the zones, and always be ready to launch that final shot.

SUPER CASHBALL will be available in Private Matches, as well! And keep an eye out for the leaderboard!

CA$HBALL STADIUM

All of this goes down in a brand new Arena: CA$HBALL STADIUM! The lights are up, the playing field is ready.

SPIN THE SUPER CASHBALL WHEEL

You’ve got 20 prizes up for grabs and theZone Enforcer Setat the end if you successfully unlock them all!

CUSTOMIZE YOUR COMMS

You can now pick how your Contestant sounds in the Arena, separate from the Face you have chosen, with the all new Voice Customization feature in the Appearance Tab. Some voices come with custom voice lines!

We still have some voice altering effects attached to certain items and those will still work, regardless of the voice you have chosen.

CHUCK THE HEALING EMITTER

This update comes with CASHBALLS and Wheels, so why not throw one more round thing into the mix! Our brand new Twitch drops campaign will start today, and you’ll be able to earn Chuck the Ball! You’ll also get the Chuck nametag sticker, and a Chuck Charm, so even when you play Light and Medium, he’ll be by your side!

All you need to do is tune in to any streamer playing in THE FINALS category and watch to earn! ensure you have connected your Twitch account so you don’t miss out on your new best bud!

LOTUS REAPER SET + 2400 MB

The Lotus Reaper Set has arrived and it comes with 2400 Multibucks, and some of the most striking pieces we have seen in the Arena to date! Bloom in silence, strike without mercy!

STORE UPDATE

Some moments in The Arena deserve to be recorded, and watched back, in beautiful 8mm quality - and now you’re able to with the Overexposed FAMAS!

Check it, and much more, out in this week’s store:

SERVER CRASH EXPLOIT

In some serious news, we have patched a critical exploit that allowed players to crash the servers. We’ve managed to compile a list of everyone who used this deliberate exploit to remove other players from the game.

We’ll be returning the lost RS to players who were affected by this in a Ranked Tournament and permanently banning those who used this exploit to wreak havoc in the last few days. Game breaking exploits are serious and performing them deliberately is not permitted.

To those impacted by this exploit, we’re sorry for the inconvenience and we appreciate all the reports that helped us identify the issue and ensure it could be stopped.

A note on Melee from Design Director, Matt:

We wanted to share an update on the state of melee, since it’s been a hot topic in the community lately. The goal is to clarify how we see melee and what kind of work we’re doing to improve it going forward.

First and foremost, melee weapons belong in THE FINALS. We wouldn’t have added them if that weren’t the case. For a melee weapon to earn its place, it needs to be viable as a style of play, intuitive for both the user and the opponent, and feel like the kills it gets are earned. Let’s break that down.

Viability

In order to make melee weapons viable, they should be able to compete with fairly similar odds to guns, but that doesn’t mean they should always be as good as the best gun or other weapons. In a game with so many weapons of incredibly varied styles, some will always be more accessible and others more niche, that’s the reality of building weapons that are so asymmetric to one another. Melee weapons, shotguns, sniper rifles and bows tend to be more niche because they exist at the extremes of balance: very short or very long ranges, very fast or very slow fire rates, etc. This makes them notoriously hard to balance. They’re often underpowered, but when buffed can quickly become overpowered and frustrating to play against. This is just the nature of balancing for more extreme playstyles. Our goal to keep them viable is to verify players have a chance to win without making them overly frustrating or too niche for regular play. It’s a hard goal to hit, thus we keep working toward it.

Intuitiveness

For melee weapons to be intuitive, they need to behave in a way that most players can easily understand and expect, especially new players. This is where ‘melee tech’ comes in. At its core, ‘Tech’ means discovering and using bugs and edge cases in the game’s code and design. Most FPS tech arises where one system meets another. For example, the Sword’s “super lunge” is the result of one movement system (the Evasive Dash) meeting another (the lunge). Likewise, the “phantom strike” tech exploits bugs and edge cases in our animation system to perform melee strikes without visible animations. We get this can be fun to discover and master, because it boosts a weapon’s power and often takes skill. But for others, it’s frustrating. It’s unintuitive, often invisible, and disproportionately strong.

Our position on ‘tech’ has been clear since our Alpha and Beta, where we discussed ‘movement tech’ in ourMeet the Makerspodcast. We see ‘tech’ as a bug. When it disrupts balance or frustrates players, we aim to fix it, and in severe cases, may ban players who repeatedly exploit it. Occasionally, ‘tech’ emerges that is intuitive and doesn’t break balance. In those rare cases, we may turn the ‘tech’ into an actual mechanic that is part of the game, but only if it fits. At the end of the day though, ‘tech’ is unintended and frequently harmful to the overall experience of the game.

Current Melee Tech

Some recent ‘melee tech’ has put us in a tough spot. Without the tech, some items can feel underpowered, and with it, they become overpowered and frustrating to play against.

We want to remove that ‘tech’ for the reasons explained above, but sometimes the work involved with re-writing a system can take a long time. So what then should we do with the frustration it’s causing in the interim? This is a tough problem to solve. Generally, we’ve solved this by nerfing the item in question while the ‘tech’ exists, until we have time to fix it properly, at which point we can re-buff the weapons. That is part of the journey the Sword has been through in recent months. It’s been nerfed to offset some ‘tech’ that was frustrating and making the Sword overly punishing to play against, while we made changes to its functionality. With 7.6, new functionality goes into the game that should address the ‘tech’ issue, allowing us to buff the Sword again. With the new functionality we can monitor how well the Sword does and go from there.

Outside of the ‘tech’ issues, we’re aware that a lot of the melee weapons still lack the refinement of our guns and that’s something we want to tackle in the long-term. In 7.6, we’re making a number of balance changes to try and smooth out some of the lumps these items have, but many of them still need considerable re-works to get them to the best place possible for both their users and opponents. Re-works take time. We’re hopeful we can deliver a number of these in the coming seasons, but in the meantime we’ll continue to do what we can by balancing within our current systems.

Hopefully this gives you a better understanding of how we see melee and our approach to it. We also hope this explanation goes some way to explaining the various melee changes made in 7.6. As always, keep providing feedback and we’ll keep trying our hardest to be as solid and varied for different playstyles as we can.

Cashout (World Tour and Ranked)

Cashout (World Tour and Ranked Tournaments)

Weapons

Security

With update 7.3, we mentioned changes coming to our anti-cheat systems, and a few questions popped up in response. So we thought we’d take this update to give you a bit more information:

Kernel-Level Anti-Cheat Isn’t New

Easy Anti-Cheat is a kernel-level program, and it’s been implemented in THE FINALS since early betas. However, we’re currently testing additional anti-cheat tools to collect feedback on what’s best for the game long-term. There’s no set timeline here, but we’re obviously cautious not to disrupt the game while testing and planning.

Modern cheats use advanced methods, including external hardware and AI, that target the game from the outside in ways that are hard to detect. To effectively protect the experience for fair players, we need anti-cheat tools that can see what’s interacting with the game process directly on the player’s computer.

We understand privacy concerns. Our anti-cheat is focused solely on identifying threats to the game. We do not collect information about your personal files, nor do we monitor unrelated activity.

Steam Deck and Proton Support

We noticed the concern about Linux following our last update. We’re testing everything across all platforms, and have made it very clear to our partners that Proton and Steam Deck are important to our development plans. While we don’t officially support Steam Deck due to our required dependence on Proton Experimental, we are committed to ensuring compatibility, and we work with external partners to fix issues before we ship a patch. The experience of every player is important to us. Despite many factors, we are still dedicated to supporting it because we know it matters. However, general Wine support is not tested, and native Linux support is not planned.

Thank you for your continuous support. We’ll have more to share in the next major update!