The biggest theory I see for the story of The Finals is that it's directly tied into Arc Raiders.
That being the rich elite that escaped earth during the exodus are playing the gameshow of The Finals in space, waiting for the Arc to wipe out the remaining survivors so they can come back and repopulate. To all the people who really liked the idea of this theory, im sorry.
We've been getting semi-consistent shorts from TheFinals youtube page that explain a few things about the meatspace of The Finals, my focus is specifically on one though, dropped approximately 4 hrs ago.
"A landfill rescue..." The short story about a little girl finding a genetically modified hybrid tiger near the transatlantic landfill is connected to lore about Ozpuze, but one word stuck to me.
Transatlantic. As in, the Atlantic ocean. These story snippets are known to be from the meatspace and if they're talking about the Atlantic ocean then humanity has to still be on earth.
Further solidifying the theory that instead of the rich elite playing The Finals in space, it was most likely a distraction for the general populace before the collapse of earth so the megacorps could keep sucking the earth dry without any backlash from the people.
Thats probably also why so much of humanity was left behind during the exodus, the gameshow of The Finals was given to the people to distract them from the rich actively preparing to abandon humanity.
The mega corporations like Alfa Acta and Vaiiya would be directly interested to join the rich in abandoning earth, since the corporations knew the collapse was coming. If Alfa Acta and Vaiiya escaped with the exodus, we now have the two corporations that could mass produce the Arc sitting in orbit, watching the earth pave over the mistakes they made and revitalize.
Seeing this abundance of resources, they create the first wave of Arc to scan, chart, and collect these resources with 2 or 3 Arc that were only for security, aka killing survivors.
Humanity pushes back against this first wave, completely rendering them obsolete, forcing innovation and improvements. Alfa Acta and Vaiiya make the second wave and started sending them down in droves, rendering topside inhabitable again.
Just like my last theory, I could curate this more and piece even more evidence together but I wanna play the game not spend my time theorizing about said game.