Dune Awakening kicked off its early release for Deluxe and Ultimate Edition players yesterday, hitting a peak player count of almost 100k worm lovers.
This early launch, which requires people to drop at least £58.50 / $69.99 / €69.99 to hop in, immediately found itself a sandy society of 79,410. The following hours would see the figure slowly climb to a peak of 93,634 before tapering off for the night.
Prior to the release the game surpassed Elden Ring: Nightreign on the Steam Top Sellers page, falling short of just Counter Strike 2. Earlier this year the game held its final invite-only beta, which eventually opened to those who pre-ordered. That beta hit a peak of 37,889, so there’s a real sign of growth in terms of early adopters.
The launch was not without its technical stumbles, the eternal curse of MMO launches. A selection of players suffered from crashes and freezing issues, with Funcom urging those affected to update Nvidia drivers, limit in-game CPU usage, and disable Hardware-accelerated GPU scheduling.
Server capacity issues were also a thorn in the player’s side initially. Due to the number of players flooding in, Sietches (the game’s name for server instances) were filling up fast. In response, Funcom pumped up the number of players that could populate each Sietche so playing with friends was more feasible.
But compared to the launches of the past, it’s not too drastic a technical disaster! Which is good for these kinds of games, first impressions are crucial and nothing turns people away like a massive login queue or progress blockers.
As for what this means for Dune Awakening? Well, the fact that this pre-order release has hit a far larger peak than the previous beta indicates a real growth in interest for the game, and that a substantial number of players dropped a solid chunk of cash on the game to get in ASAP.
In addition, it may just be a canary in the coal mine for an even greater spike in popularity come June 10, when those who nab the standard version of Dune Awakening gain access. Given you’ve got streamers diving in, plenty of buzz on social media, and a strong start reverberating around the MMO space right now, I’d imagine the Funcom devs are absolutely beaming right now.