The Finals open beta welcomed a whopping 7.5m players to the fray
Arena borealis
The open beta for The Finals - the upcoming destruction-heavy PvP FPS from Ex-EA and DICE exec Patrick Söderlund's Embark Studios - is now over, and it seems to have been remarkably successful.
Following its conclusion, Embark announced that a whopping 7.5 million players joined the beta to battle it out among the masses.
"It's been a thrilling week for the entire team, one that we'll never forget. We're utterly dazzled by your kindness, openness, and excitement throughout the entire Open Beta period," it wrote in a blog post over on Steam.
"Everyone at Embark is full of gratitude, and it will fuel us as we continue to develop The Finals."
The studio closed by stating it was time to "hunker down" (an underused expression, in my opinion) and get to work addressing the various fixes and improvements for the game.
"Stick around folks. We'll be back."
We got our first look at The Finals' gameplay last year, when its eye-popping and utterly chaotic pre-alpha footage was shared ahead of a closed alpha test.
Since that time, it has had a closed beta test, and now its most recent open beta.
It hasn't been all rosy for the developer, however. Soon after this most recent beta went live, many criticised the studio for its use of AI for commentator voice overs in The Finals.
Embark went on to respond to this backlash, telling Eurogamer "making games without actors isn't an end goal for Embark" and that the use of AI text-to-speech is based on real voices.