Surprise! The Finals has stealth-dropped and is available right now

Hot new multiplayer shooter The Finals has surprised-dropped and is available right now on PC, PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series S/X. The announcement came during The Game Awards moments ago.

The Finals is a free-to-play game so there’s nothing to pay up front until you want to buy cosmetics or the Battle Pass, the first season of which obviously begins today.

I played a pre-launch build of The Finals last week ahead of today’s surprise-drop. New in it was the Las Vegas casino level, which brings the total launch map-count to four. In Vegas you’ll find huge casino buildings to play around in and on top of, and there are sandstorms and traps and tripwires to mix things up.

As you’ll see from my preview of The Finals, I was quite taken with the game. Not since Overwatch have I been slapped in the face with this much immediate multiplayer shooter fun. Quite how it proceeds from here, though, is another matter – now, the live service business begins.

The Finals has been publicly playable before, with the recent open beta welcoming a whopping 7.5 million people. You might also have heard of it because of the controversy caused by The Final’s AI-generated voice commentary. It’s something I talk to developer Embark about in my preview.