The player numbers of Dune: Awakening have recently declined, and the update could only briefly halt this. Now the developers at Funcom are announcing a restructuring to improve the game for the remaining players.
What kind of statement is this? The development studio Funcom, which is behind Dune: Awakening, has announced in a new statement that they will carry out a restructuring within the team. The developers explain that they will transition from developing a game to “long-term live operations.”
To achieve this, it is necessary to change the team and also to lay off employees. The developer studio writes in a statement that is available to gamesindustry.biz: “This requires a restructuring of our teams and a consolidation of our resources from various projects and studios. Unfortunately, this also means that we have to say goodbye to valued colleagues.”
The developers further explain that they are also working on the console version of Dune: Awakening, which is set to be released in 2026. The restructuring process is to begin now, but they want to help employees find new jobs.
Here you can see the trailer for the last major update “Chapter 2”:
Divided community and weak update
How is Dune: Awakening doing? Dune: Awakening has had a problem with its community from the very beginning. It quickly split into PvP players who were eager for the endgame in the deep desert and PvE players who just wanted to build and craft at a leisurely pace.
For both factions, the endgame at launch was unsatisfactory, which resulted in many patches and adjustments from the developers, but for some, these changes came too late. The loss of one’s own base due to long inactivity has bothered many players since the beginning.
Four months after the release, the player numbers are not looking good. During the weekly peak time on Sunday evening, approximately 24,000 Steam players log in simultaneously, while during the week there are about 18,000 players (via SteamDB). Compared to the launch where there were over 189,000, that’s significantly less, but not terrible, especially due to the last update.
What happened with the update? The developers of Dune: Awakening released the major “Chapter 2” update in mid-September, which was meant to expand the game with new content. However, even the announcement seemed almost like an apology from the developers. They explained in the announcement of “Chapter 2” that the endgame changes requested from all sides would not come until 2026.
Although the update brought players back, just two weeks later the survival MMO was back to its previous player numbers on Steam (via SteamDB). The upward trend in player numbers only lasted briefly.
This was likely also due to the fact that the developers added too few building elements that were simply missing for the core PvE players. The criticism of the new update was so high that the head of the game even left the official Discord.
Dune: Awakening has built a player base that they want to secure for the coming years. The fact that the developers are restructuring now to keep the survival MMO attractive for players in the future is therefore not an extraordinary step, especially when considering the problems of recent months.
The important update “Chapter 3” is planned for January to March 2026 and will likely be decisive for the survival MMO, since the major change for the endgame is supposed to come here. How Dune: Awakening will continue in the future is made clear here: The developers of Dune: Awakening explain what the game should look like in 10 years: “We will travel to new planets”
