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"

The custom created character in Dune Awakening.

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.