The Finals genius creates the ultimate cheater-killing machine by sticking a turret to a flower pot

A player from The Finals cuts another on a rooftop, revealing heaps of coins — (Image credit: Embark Studios)

A genius The Finals player has come up with an ace workaround for dealing with hackers and cheaters.

Cheating is sadly rife in The Finals right now, though a recent anti-cheat update should aid things. It's gotten so bad over the last few weeks that fans are asking Embark Studios to region-lock The Finals. The developer has pushed back against this suggestion, writing that it's xenophobic to suggest all cheaters are contained in Asia.

While the developers beaver away to sort it all out, one player has devised a fantastic method to stop hackers. According to the player below, another player spotted a hacker struggling to deal with an APS device. The player reasoned that perhaps they couldn't lock on to turrets, and they proved this theory correct by attaching an APS to a plant and carrying it around with them.

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This meant the cheater couldn't automatically target them, as their aiming hack wasn't programmed to hone in on the APS system the player was carrying. It's an utterly genius method, and you've got to hand it to the player in question for coming up with such a refined, logical method of dealing with a cheater in a rapid FPS game.

If you face hackers, try this! (might be big counter until they hopefully get banned) from r/thefinals

"There was a Light hacking in my game, and I had a turret put down, and it just murked him," one Reddit commenter responds. "Well, I don't know how the cheats work exactly, but it just felt like their system has a problem locking on players when something 'not lockable' is right in front of them. I don't know, it worked for me, but I could only try once (we lost after this fight)," the original player responded.

The Reddit post's comments are full of other players attesting to success with the same method. It seems The Finals cheaters genuinely aren't able to lock onto a target that isn't a player. One commenter reasons that cheaters might update their scripts to target turrets, but there's a lot of doubt as to whether it's possible for a hack to target something like a turret.

The Finals patch 1.4.0 is now live, and it's introduced some long-awaited nerfs for Heavy players.

Hirun Cryer is a freelance reporter and writer with Gamesradar+ based out of U.K. After earning a degree in American History specializing in journalism, cinema, literature, and history, he stepped into the games writing world, with a focus on shooters, indie games, and RPGs, and has since been the recipient of the MCV 30 Under 30 award for 2021. In his spare time he freelances with other outlets around the industry, practices Japanese, and enjoys contemporary manga and anime.