The latest update for Dune: Awakening begins with an apology. Recognizing that communication with players hasn’t been Funcom’s strong suit of late, the developer explains that it’s in part because of “state mandated” vacations.
“I apologize if people feel the communication around issues with the game has been lacking,” says the latest update posted to Steam (thanks, PC Gamer). “We are focused on improving this. With a percentage of the team having their well-earned (and state mandated) vacations, customer service and the community team have not always had access to developers who can answer their every question.”
If you’ve ever been on a trip to Norway (and Sweden) during July, you’ll have learned the hard way (I speak from experience) that everything is closed. This is a result of fellesferie, the annual summer “common holidays” where just about everyone takes their vacation at the same time. Which is quite mad, but for Norwegians, entirely ordinary. It’s normal for offices to just close down in July, and people who do persist in working during the month will struggle if they rely on suoport from their colleagues. It appears to be fellesferie that’s affected Dune: Awakening.
Regarding the enforced nature of these vacations, Norway has something called the The Holiday Act, that mandates all employees receive 25 days of vacation a year, meaning it’s even more tricky to prevent an entire team all disappearing off at once.
“We’ve been playing whack-a-mole with bugs, cheats and exploits during the July month of summer,” says Funcom. “We’ve banned thousands of cheaters, fixed a bunch of duplication and exploit bugs and continued working on the stability of the game. We’ve been working to achieve a cadence of patches that allows us time to make stable and consistent fixes, while being fast enough to address issues like exploits before they get too far out of control. Live Game development is a blend of reactivity and long term planning.”
While players have loved Awakening, there’s been a lot of dissatisfaction around what there is to do once the main content is finished. Funcom explains that its Gamescom news is going to be focused on the Chapter 2 Free Update and The Lost Harvest DLC, neither of which will affect the endgame, saying, “this is because Chapter 2 and the DLC were planned and began development before launch.” But, it goes on to list what’s happening in the later stages.
It seems the big problem facing Funcom, other than an empty office, is that Dune: Awakening has drawn in what it describes as “very different demographics,” who all want something different from the MMO’s endgame. However, the issues are boiled down to “loss of items/vehicles, players feeling that they are forced into PvP, exploits and cheats, and lack of endgame content/grind.” Arriving soon are the following changes:
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Improved Player Logging – One of the key frustrations we see is the lack of information and clarity around why certain items/objects/vehicles are gone. We will increase the information in your logs so that you have a better idea of what is going on. For example, listing the names of people who take things from chests in your base.
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Offline Notifications about important events – We understand that not everybody can or wants to log in to check power/taxes constantly in the game. We would like to create a notification service that sends you the status of your base via email. This one is squarely aimed at you, Ben.
The post then continues with longer-term plans for endgame content:
As we’ve mentioned previously, the Landsraad is supposed to be the endgame activity driver. Currently it does not have the breadth or depth of content or progression to serve that function. As we work towards Chapter 3, we will begin to tie the faction progression of the game to the Landsraad, while also systematically building out the Landsraad with a greater variety of activities across the world.
As a player this means that you can increase your faction rank by completing Landsraad tasks, checking in with your Duke or Baron occasionally to perform special missions and visit faction vendors.
Landsraad activities will become contract based, rather than delivery based, which will allow us to effectively remove the issue of stockpiling that is currently endemic in the game.
This ensures that people are rewarded for solo play (as well as making contributions easier for them to track) and will give you many choices in how you progress over time.
As for the planned activities, we have plenty in mind in addition to the current testing stations and shipwrecks. The following list contains examples, and not promises, as these will take work and time to deliver. But currently we are thinking of things like: Assassinations, Treasure Maps, Races, Construction Challenges, Duels, Faction vs Faction maps, Improved control points, Scavenger Hunts, Temporary Crafting Challenges etc.
These activities will make use of the Overland Map, spawning in new maps as required. We have always wanted to flesh out the Overland Map over time, and this will boost that along.
Of course, we are open to your suggestions so please share with us on social media the kinds of activities you would like to see in the Landsraad.
As the Landsraad activities become more fleshed out, we will then transition the Deep Desert back towards the original intention – a sandbox area where players can compete for control of the spice. We will continue to iterate on the Deep Desert – adding no-fly zones to enforce ground combat, adding more layouts with more variety and challenge, and ensuring that there is clear progression. In addition, we are experimenting with the tech behind the Deep Desert and if things go well, you will experience the Deep Desert in a much more stable environment.
This will apparently be the focus for the rest of 2025, now everyone’s back in the office. Before they all take off again for Christmas.