Following various duping glitches, exploits, and a recent patch that cost Deep Desert players "bases and equipment," Dune: Awakening developer Funcom has issued a formal apology and statement on its plan to resolve the issues.
Just two days ago, Dune: Awakening received a patch – 1.1.15.0, to be precise – and it didn't go exactly as planned. As Funcom describes in its own developer update today, "we patched out a layout change to the Deep Desert which caused several areas of the PvE Deep Desert to become PvP enabled." For anyone less familiar with the survival MMO and its community's past PvP complaints, the sudden swap from PvE resulted in utter chaos.
"This was an oversight in our development process and internal communications, which led to people suffering an unfortunate amount of lost bases and equipment," as Funcom explains in its new update. "This change was intended to only occur with the next Coriolis cycle and not impact the ongoing cycle. We're incredibly sorry that this happened, and we want to acknowledge that this should have been handled better."
However, the studio is taking action to patch things up and prevent them from happening again: "We've changed our internal processes as a result of this and will be better in the future. We are working to reimburse vehicles and items (to the best of our ability) to players who were impacted by this. You can expect the reimbursed materials, items, and vehicle components to show up in the in-game 'Claim Rewards' tab by the end of this week."
That isn't the only problem Funcom addresses in its virtual letter, either. Following a plethora of item duplication methods and other exploits, like "third party cheat engines, client hacks, or in-game exploitation of game mechanics," the devs' "primary focus, which continues over the next weeks and months, will be to remove all identified exploits." They've already "taken action on several hundred players," and "there will be more waves of bans coming."
Devs also "apologize to people who have lost vehicles or other resources due to various bugs in the game" – a situation I'm unfortunately all too familiar with as a player myself – asking fans to "please submit a ticket" with details if they were affected. There's more to come to Dune: Awakening than just fixes, too. "In addition, we will be hard at work improving the game, adding quality of life features, and addressing critical gameplay issues."
As a dedicated fan of the game and PvE enjoyer, I personally look forward to seeing some of these integrated – and, of course, to seeing less cheating and griefing in both the Deep Desert and Arrakis in its entirety.
