Update 7.9.0

Written By Dusty Gustafsson
 

2025.08.14

MONSTER ALERT!

Welcome to the monstrous end-of-season showdown! We’re introducing a new Limited-Time mode called Head 2 Head, which pits Sponsor against Sponsor in the final round of Cashout! Earn free Event rewards for completing Contracts and grab a full set of VAIIYA and CNS themed skins!

Head 2 Head captures that Final Round experience, a 3v3 round where Respawns are faster and unlimited. Look out for an all new Gameshow Event, the Nedstrike, that will have you fleeing in terror! 

Complete Event Contracts to get free rewards! 

XP OVERRIDE 

Time to kick your grind into overdrive! Earn 200% XP for Daily Contracts, and up to 150% XP and Fans for gameplay from now until the end of the Season!

BIRDS OF A FEATHER? STICK TOGETHER!

Vibing with your team? Take the party into the next match by selecting STAY AS A PARTY at the end of the round! When a match concludes you’ll have the option to vote to keep playing with your same team, forming a party. Who knows - maybe this is the start of a lifelong friendship in The Arena!

JOIN THE OPEN QUALIFIERS!

The road to esports ends in Stockholm, but now - your journey begins.

Assemble your team and sign up starting today! 

This is a global show of skills! Only the bold will rise. Only the best will qualify. 

It’s time to register your team for the Open Qualifiers! This is your first stop on the road to The Grand Major 2025, our first major tournament for THE FINALS, organized by FACEIT and DREAMHACK, which culminates at Dreamhack Stockholm in November. 

Sign up your team today: https://www.reachthefinals.com/registration

NEW TWITCH DROPS

Look out! A new set of fiery purple Twitch Drops. Tune in to get the Broadcast Blaze set of equipment skins!

ONGOING ISSUES WITH FREEZES AND STUTTERING 

Over the summer we have been working to identify the issue where some players experience short bursts of stuttering and sometimes even multi-second "freezes" of the client during gameplay. It’s been a challenge to find the root cause, but this week we finally managed to reproduce the issue! This means we are getting closer to finding a permanent solution. 

While we work on figuring out how to eradicate this issue, it’s good to know that the game runs smoother with more memory, so closing any memory-hungry applications (such as Chrome) while playing can help with overall performance. 

Balance Changes

Gadgets 

Goo Grenade

  • Cooldown increased from 20s to 30s
    Dev Note: We’ve noticed the prevalence of goo increasing a little over time, to the point where we think it can now be a little too disruptive to some encounters. This change should reduce the frequency of goo usage slightly 

Modes

Cashout (World Tour)

  • Vaults/Cash Boxes that have not been delivered to a Cashout Station by the time overtime starts will no longer despawn, reverting a change made in 7.6. This change only impacts World Tour. In Ranked, Vaults/Cash Boxes that have not been delivered will continue to despawn when overtime starts
    Dev Note: We’ve been monitoring the 7.6 change and are seeing fewer double-stacked cash boxes (especially Tier 3) and a slight drop in third-party fights. These were both expected outcomes. That said, we’re not fully convinced it’s the right long-term solution. The despawn rule feels more disruptive in World Tour, where team wipe penalties aren’t in play. So for now, we’re disabling it there but keeping it active and under review in Ranked. 

Weapons 

93R

  • Decreased rate of fire from 220 to 210, making the weapon slightly slower
    Dev Note: We’ve been monitoring the 93R since buffing it in update 7.0. The buff improved the weapon considerably, and even made it a touch too strong. We think this small change will better align it with other Light weapons.

Cerberus 12GA

  • Decreased the radius of the pellet distribution by approximately 10%, making the weapon more accurate

  • Increased the heat applied to world objects by the Cerberus from 2.5 to 7.5, meaning it will now ignite toxic gas clouds in a single shot
    Dev Note: Since our last round of Cerberus changes the weapon has dropped dramatically in usage across all modes and skill tiers. We want to buff its viability, without returning to its previous overpowered state and we hope these changes will have that effect.    

Model 1887

  • Increased maximum ammo capacity from 6 to 7
    Dev Note: The Model is in a very similar place to the Cerberus, with very low usage and poor performance metrics right now. This subtle change should buff its viability without over-tuning its power.

Sledgehammer

  • Secondary attack damage increased from 154 to 175
    Dev Note: We’re continuing to monitor and adjust the Sledgehammer. This damage buff to the secondary attack will boost its value compared to primary attacks. We’d also like to note we’re aware of some hit registration issues with the Sledeghammer which we’re currently investigating and hope to be able to fix as soon as possible. 

Sword

  • Increased the vertical component of the secondary attack’s rotation clamping from 40 degrees to 90 degrees, meaning the Sword will be less constrained when aiming up or down during a lunge attack
    Dev Note: After recent feedback from players, we’ve relaxed the vertical component of the lunge’s rotation clamping as we agree the vertical clamp was too severe and, in general, vertical movements of the lunge were not what were being exploited previously. Hopefully this feels a lot better, but we’ll continue to read feedback on how players are finding it. 

Content and Bug Fixes

Animation 

  • Fixed melee swings sometimes not playing when viewing other Contestants

  • Fixed an issue where sprint animations would not play correctly after inspecting with certain skins

  • Fixed an issue where jumping with the Throwing Knives, while using the secondary attack, could cover the center of the screen

  • Fixed a case where the Riot Shield could desync in third person, not correctly showing the protected state
    Dev Note: This is the first of several fixes for Riot Shield issues. We’re addressing both animation clarity and cases where the shield’s collision or state can desync from what players see.

Audio 

  • Improved the quality of Announcer voice lines, and made them less repetitive

Contracts

  • Fixed issue where some damage types were not considered for Contracts involving damage on/from the Power Shift platform 


Customization

  • Fixed The Devourer eyes showing up on top of glasses

  • Fixed an issue that caused some of the older CNS items to have incorrectly displayed prints on them 

ESPORTS

  • Updated the Esports section to accommodate new information and registration for the Open Qualifiers.
    Dev note: Check out more on the esports format here, and don’t forget to sign up to compete in the Open Qualifiers! 

Gadgets

H+ Infuser

  • Fixed an issue where getting eliminated while aiming down sights could result in a broken weapon model

Healing Emitter

  • Fixed an issue where Contestants were not healed by their team’s Healing Emitter while holding an enemy team’s Healing Emitter

Nullifier

  • Fixed an issue where nullified opponents could deal quick melee damage

Gameplay

  • Fixed an issue that caused kill hitmarkers to be missing in certain situations

  • Fixed a hit-reg issue with KS-23 and SR-84

  • Updated respawn statue collision to behave more predictably and reduce rolling on sloped surfaces

Maps

General

  • Larger trees now have sturdier trunks that require more bullets to destroy, making them more reliable for cover and line of sight blocking

Practice Range

  • Fixed an issue where the trophy leaderboard text could be difficult to read when picked up

  • Added Blast Off and Super Cashball trophies

Bernal

  • Fixed a zipline on top of the Chapel that floated after the geometry beneath it was destroyed

  • Updated collision on corrugated metal modules to prevent objectives from visually appearing through the roof and being interactable

  • Fix for collision issue of railing piece, specifically causing movement issues around residential staircases

Monaco

  • Fixed some visual gaps in ground meshes

Seoul:

  • Slightly raised the vent path on the outside of Apartments so you can smoothly walk over the ledge at the end without snagging

Skyway Stadium

  • Fixed an issue where grenades and bullets could pass through a narrow part of  the back of the Office building

SYS$Horizon

  • Updated the Library building with the latest destruction systems 

  • Fixed a step being too high on the voxel bridge next to campus which caused players to snag

Nozomi/Citadel

  • Added trees at the edges around the Cybercafe to block sightlines towards the corner next to Apartments

  • Fixed a duplicate desk underneath another desk in the Operations Center

Private Matches & Spectator

  • Improved layout and visuals for the match building screen

  • Fixed an issue where you could end up in a corrupted private match lobby

Rendering

  • Added support for AMD FSR 3 Frame Generation

  • Pause DLSS Frame Generation when in fullscreen menus (except Video Settings), to avoid rendering artifacts on UI elements

  • Updated AMD FSR version from 3.1.3 to 3.1.4

  • Fixed an issue causing light leaking in fog

  • Optimized GPU performance when a lot of visual effects are active

  • Removed a command line that could give unfair advantages by lowering graphical fidelity

Settings

  • Fixed an issue that prevented gamepads/controllers from working when Steam Input is enabled

Social

  • Fixed mouse scroll wheel functioning poorly with the text chat window

  • Added Stay as a Party functionality to end of round screen
    Dev Note: Long requested and finally in THE FINALS - you can now opt in to form a party with the team members of your last game, right at the end of round screen!

UI

  • XBOX platform avatars are now properly shown as your profile image where applicable

  • Fixed an issue where only item names were shown instead of descriptions in outfit customization

  • Fixed incorrect game mode name being shown in the tab scoreboard when reconnecting after shutting down the game

  • Resolved issue causing new markers to appear on other outfits after deleting an outfit

  • The Contracts screen now properly retains the selected tab when navigating back from other pages

  • Fix rewards flow screen getting into a blank state when hitting next/skip too quickly

  • Fix text chat sometimes staying on-screen after being closed during gameplay

Security 

New update and exciting news from the Anti-Cheat team!

With this release we will perform a technical test of Denuvo Anti Cheat on Xbox for Windows. If the test goes well, we'll consider rolling it out incrementally on Steam in Season 8.

We'd also like to point out that we're not utilizing the Digital Rights Management parts of the Denuvo platform.

Compatibility with SteamDeck and Proton has been tested as well, and we are still committed to serving that part of our community.

Please keep sending in player reports and other information you believe could be of value to us, it really helps us in our work to keep THE FINALS fair and secure!

//Tom and Magnum

 
Dusty Gustafsson
Next

THE FINALS: THE ROAD TO ESPORTS - EPISODE 3