The Finals

The Finals is a free-to-play 3v3v3 first-person shooter framed as a high-production televised gameshow, built in Unreal Engine 5EngineUnreal Engine (Epic Games)Epic Games' Unreal Engine is the most widely used engine in big-budget PC games. Versions 4 and 5 power a substantial share of the modern competitive shooter market, including Valorant (UE4), Fortnite (UE5), PUBG (UE4), The Finals (UE5), and Delta Force (UE5).20 games in this family → by Embark StudiosPublisherEmbark StudiosEmbark Studios is a Stockholm-based developer founded by former DICE leadership, a Nexon subsidiary since 2021. Its titles The Finals and the 2025 extraction-shooter hit Arc Raiders use Easy Anti-Cheat for kernel-mode protection, layered with behavioral input analysis and, on Arc Raiders, a limited Denuvo Anti-Cheat rollout.2 games in this family → in Stockholm. It launched at The Game Awards in December 2023 on PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X/S. The studio was founded in 2018 by Patrick Söderlund and other veterans of DICE and the Battlefield series, and that lineage shows: the headline mechanic is physics-driven environmental destruction, with arenas that can be reshaped, dropped, and rebuilt during a match. Embark publishes the game directly and ships regular seasonal content as a live service.

The main game process is Discovery.exe (Embark's internal code name for the project); a 2025 update split out anti-cheat-specific binaries such as Discovery-e.exe for the EACAnti-cheatEasy Anti-Cheat (EAC)Easy Anti-Cheat is one of the most widely deployed kernel anti-cheats in PC gaming. Founded by Finnish company Kamu in 2006, acquired by Epic Games in 2018, and bundled with Epic Online Services. The kernel driver loads while a protected game is running. User-mode daemons EasyAntiCheat.exe and EasyAntiCheat_EOS.exe are catalogued in the Field Guide's processes section.18 games in this family → path. EAC runs only while the game is open and is removed when the game closes. Crossplay is supported across PC and the current-generation consoles.

The Finals ships with Easy Anti-Cheat, in the EAC variant tied to Epic Online Services that the game uses for matchmaking and identity. EAC operates at the kernel level on Windows, with a signed driver loaded while the game is running and unloaded on exit. In 2025 Embark also announced an additional kernel-driver anti-cheat layer to harden against memory-resident cheats; the studio has publicly committed to keeping the game working on SteamOS, Proton, and Steam Deck through that change. The trust ask is the standard one for this family: a vendor-signed kernel module is loaded only during play, scoped to the running session, and removed afterward. The easyanticheat_eos.exeProcesseasyanticheat_eos.exeEasy Anti-Cheat for Epic Online Services (EOS variant)Open plate → process is catalogued in the Field Guide's processes section.

Embark Studios is a relatively young developer (founded 2018) and The Finals is its first shipped game, so the long-form publisher track record is short. Embark has been majority-owned by the Korean publisher Nexon since 2019 and fully owned since 2021. The most-discussed editorial issue around launch was Embark's use of generative text-to-speech for in-game commentator and contestant voices, including ElevenLabs-based pipelines. The studio has defended the approach as a tooling decision built on top of recorded human performances, while voice-acting professionals and parts of the player community pushed back. We note the practice without taking a side; readers who care about it should weigh it directly.