“The transition from development to long-term live operation, while also building towards a major console release next year, will require us to restructure our teams and focus our resources from across projects and studios,” Funcom continues.
“Unfortunately, this also means having to say goodbye to cherished colleagues. This difficult process is starting now, and we cannot yet determine the exact impact. We are working to find new opportunities for those affected.”
GamesIndustry notes that Funcom did not disclose how many employees will be impacted — the latest example in a lengthy series of industry redundancies.
In August, Dune: Awakening production director Ole Andreas Hayley told GamesRadar+ that player retention had been “extremely good,” and referenced a long-term, 10-year plan to broaden the MMO’s Dune-based content.
The MMO launched with solid — if not outstanding — reviews and achieved a peak Steam population more than three times that of Funcom’s previous big title, Conan Exiles. However, player numbers dipped following the Chapter 2 update and surrounding changes, drawing mixed reactions from the community. (coverage)
Across its lifetime, Dune: Awakening has accumulated 56,779 “Mostly Positive” Steam user reviews with an overall 72% score. Its recent-review tally sits at 2,782 entries at 62% positive, which registers as a “Mixed” rating. Our review of the game was similarly middling.
At the time the original report was published, Steam’s concurrent player count for the game had fallen significantly from its launch peak of nearly 190,000. Reportedly there were 12,710 players online, placing it at about rank 131 on Steam, with a 24-hour peak near 19,125; these figures fluctuate and could briefly push it into the roughly 85–100 range on the SteamDB charts.
Funcom’s wording is cautious, but the move to restructure for live service and a forthcoming console launch reads like an effort to lower operating costs in response to the post-launch decline. The company appears to be reassessing how heavily it will invest in the game’s long-term roadmap.
Developing and sustaining MMOs is notoriously challenging; if these cuts are a reactive measure to a temporary downturn, they risk deepening community unease rather than alleviating it.
Dune: Awakening devs apologize for “created expectations” surrounding new Lost Harvest DLC after Chapter 2 update, promise “to rectify” things with more content this fall.
Source: gamesradar.com
