Joel Bylos, CCO at Funcom, has revealed Dune: Awakening devs are looking into ways to make its PvP more engaging, even as most of its community prefers PvE.
GamesRadar+ spoke to Bylos at Gamescom 2026 and asked about PvP in Dune: Awakening being somewhat optional, and whether that works too much in favor of PvE-focused players at the expense of those who are interested in PvP. Creative director Bylos responded, "I think that probably was the issue with the game at launch, was that we were trying to do too much for too many people."
He explains, "We were mixing two types of players together who didn't want to be mixed together," adding that he thinks "PvP players and PvE players don't really want to play together, and when they do, the PvP players are sharks in a fish tank, you know, really enjoying themselves."
However, those PvP-focused players are a minority in the Dune: Awakening community, as Bylos says devs discovered that, "metrics-wise, 80% of our players were PvE, and not PvPers. So we've decided to focus more on that audience."
However, even with a higher focus on PvE and the single-player mode coming alongside Dune: Awakening's console launch next month, Funcom is not completely abandoning PvP players. Bylos notes, "We will look into doing more structured PvP things in the future," and that when the console launch is in the past, "we'll have more time to look and actually think about carefully about the kind of features we're doing." Bylos specifically notes that "faction versus faction" PvP is "something on my mind."
