The hottest game on Steam right now is an FPS that technically hasn't even been released yet. Hundreds of thousands of people are trying out The Finals, a destructive competitive shooter by former Battlefield developers that is currently in open beta

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Indeed, the popularity of the beta has been so great that The Finals is at the top of Steam's top wish list, ahead of perennial heavyweights such as Manor Lords, Hades 2, Ark 2, and Hollow Knight: Silksong The Finals has been hovering in the top 20 on the wishlist for almost a year now, but it's quickly risen to the top, as an influx of 200,000 enthusiastic players would naturally lead one to expect, while other titles like Starfield, Atomic Heart, Party Animals," and several other games that had previously dominated the top spot, all released in 2023, also helped.

It is also a strong reminder that the appetite for great shooters is endless. While many FPSs fade away without much of a response, The Finals has a good chance of becoming a fixture, depending on post-launch support. This year's release of "BattleBit Remastered" sold 2 million copies in two weeks and still has a steady player base, while past releases such as "Hyper Scape," "The Cycle: Hyperscape," "The Cycle: Frontier," and most recently Sega's Hyena" ended their services prematurely.

The Finals are still in their honeymoon phase, and players are excited and inspired by their skillful gunplay, skill-based moves, and stunned destruction techniques. Playing with friends is great fun. Inevitably, however, The Finals' strong fundamentals lose their luster, and general complaints and requests surface; Embark has made it clear that this beta is a legitimate stress test of the servers, but server instability is currently a major issue.

It is also questionable whether The Finals has a deep enough meta to keep serious players coming back for more. The maps are very flexible, but the classes are simpler than in other games. There is no way to customize guns or combine them with secondary slots, so players will quickly figure out which guns are clearly the best and which are not worth using (if you play Medium, stick to AKs). Most of the variation in class setups depends on which gadgets you bring. There are over a dozen options for each class, and unlocking each one will take a while.

Perhaps The Finals will be a game that is largely about maps and modes. Three maps are available in the open beta, but developer Embark Studios is also offering variations based on time of day and a map modifier that will be randomly chosen at the start of the match. The "game show event" adds more chaos to the middle of the match with modifiers such as low gravity, meteor showers, and rising lava. These all sound very cool, but in the more casual Bank It mode I played, the game show effects were rarely triggered, and the map variations, except when the cash-out box is on a moving platform, do not change the match not change the flow of the game much.

I currently have a lot of fun outplaying squads with friends, but what I want more than anything is a mode that captures the casual chaos of Battlefield at The Finals. Larger teams, more blast opportunities, and classic arena shooter modes like CTF could work great in this sandbox-like map.

All of this is possible, but I am not sure how Embark intends to support The Finals as a live service. All we know for sure is that it will be free-to-play with the usual Battle Pass. The actual release date is unknown; the studio has previously said it plans to release "Finals" in 2023, but with only two months left in the year and the open beta ending on November 5, early 2024 may be a safe assumption.