The developers of Dune: Awakening have asked players in an email to nominate their game for an award. However, they find it rather cheeky.
What is this award? The developers of Dune: Awakening have called on players in an email to nominate their title for the award for “most innovative gameplay” at the Steam Awards. Games that particularly excite through their mechanics are to be honored here.
Last year, the innovative “Liars Bar” won the award, as it reinvented Russian Roulette and turned it into a social deduction game. Other nominees included games like the production simulation Satisfactory, the co-op shooter Helldivers 2, the post-apocalyptic shooter Stalker 2, and the card rogue-like Balatro.
This year, the developers hope the award will go to Dune: Awakening, but their own community has something to say about that.
Learn more about the relationship between fans and developers here:
Wrong Award for Dune: Awakening
What do fans criticize? Fans primarily have nothing against the email that calls for voting. That’s now customary and nothing to be upset about. However, the award they are asked to vote for is considered wrongly chosen by the players.
Dune: Awakening has struggled tremendously with its gameplay this year. The game suffered from a sort of identity crisis, during which the developers had to make strong adjustments repeatedly to satisfy the players:
- Initially, the game was intended as a PvPvE survival MMO, where the endgame represents a competition between factions.
- However, the endgame area was designed solely for PvP and caused frustration among PvE players.
- Through adjustments, PvE players were then able to access endgame resources without any danger, which significantly softened the PvP in the game.
- The political endgame, where the game’s guilds try to gain dominance, was too easy and simultaneously too insignificant.
- Additionally, many veterans had to start from scratch when they wanted to play Dune: Awakening again.
- To this day, there is a lack of an interesting gameplay loop in the endgame, which functions beyond PvP and provides exciting moments for players in PvE.
- This new gameplay loop is expected to come with the next update in early 2026, as the developers recently announced on duneawakening.com.
Which category fits better? For players, the award for best sound design is much more fitting instead of the gameplay award. They write on Reddit:
- quantumfloatboat: “I would choose them for sound design if I could. The worm sounds so good, and the soundtrack is fantastic as well.”
- ExtensionOpening3388: “Agree 100%: sound design plus the content of the radio stations.”
- ZamazaCallista: “Oh yes, the sound and a lot of the visual elements are great. But the actual gameplay? Definitely not innovative.”
- Psychrite: “I mean, the building system was cool, but not innovative. The combat was decent, but not innovative at all. The endgame was… the exact opposite of innovation; I wish they had drawn inspiration from a more successful game instead of doing what they did with Dune.”
The sound design of Dune: Awakening is well received by players, while much criticism is directed at the gameplay. Whether the title will even be nominated for an award remains to be seen.
Dune: Awakening consistently brings important updates with features that significantly improve the game. Recently, they addressed one of the pain points of the title by allowing players to easily pack their base and no longer lose items due to extended offline periods: Dune: Awakening has been losing players constantly for months – Now the developers are addressing the biggest criticism
