Dune Awakening devs don't expect to "keep launch player numbers" after Steam player count hit 189,000 then ran off a cliff, but they're trying: "We do hope to get players returning"

News
By published

Funcom is sending out an S.O.S.

The custom created character in Dune Awakening
(Image credit: Funcom)

Dune: Awakening had a more devastating downfall than a Russian tsar, with the MMO reaching an incredible 189,333 peak player count on Steam back in 2025 and spending the cold months since then collecting only a fraction of that – about 10,000 players a day. But developer Funcom is sort of at peace with it.

Lead producer Ole Andreas and senior content manager Tor Egil discuss this with FRVR in a new interview about Dune: Awakening. "It is a live game, and it's a natural thing to see the cycles." Egil explains, "It's overall hard to expect to keep launch player numbers for a super long time, that's always going to be hard." That said, Dune's fresh Chapter 3 is oriented around clawing players back.

Dune: Awakening Chapter 3 is "not going to please everyone," but it's only the start of many changes for the survival MMO – including melee tweaks, an endgame PvE overhaul, and private servers.

Ashley Bardhan
Ashley Bardhan
Senior Writer

Ashley is a Senior Writer at GamesRadar+. She's been a staff writer at Kotaku and Inverse, too, and she's written freelance pieces about horror and women in games for sites like Rolling Stone, Vulture, IGN, and Polygon. When she's not covering gaming news, she's usually working on expanding her doll collection while watching Saw movies one through 11.

You must confirm your public display name before commenting

Please logout and then login again, you will then be prompted to enter your display name.