If you’re already having trouble settling into packed-out “sietches” in Dune: Awakening, it seems Funcom is quite aware. On its social media accounts, Funcom announced that it’s already working on implementing more servers for its players in both North America and Europe.
Two posts were made to address this, first yesterday for North America and today for Europe, claiming to need to “accomodate more Sleepers,” an ironic title given the situation. Respectively, they started with 40 and 35 servers each for this access period, as announced ahead of time by Funcom, with each server hosting 20 “sietches,” or instances, of its Hagga Basin primary PvE and progression region.
It’s also worth noting that it’s only just hours into the third day of the five-day “head start” opening of these servers for Dune: Awakening, as the servers launched on June 5, and the full launch is Tuesday, June 10.
We are opening new Worlds in the EU region to accommodate the growing number of Sleepers joining Arrakis.We continue to monitor our services and open more Worlds where needed.Thank you again for your overwhelming support. Here’s to a spicy weekend! https://t.co/z67tJ0hjHx pic.twitter.com/YWFEpZGZ6H
— Dune: Awakening (@DuneAwakening) June 7, 2025
Even now, it really does seem packed. While Steam charts aren’t entirely indicative of what’s going on (some players can be idling in the main menu, for instance), they do show over 90,000 players running Dune: Awakening at both peak times so far on Thursday and Friday, particularly around 7:00 p.m. UTC, between 7 and 10 p.m. or so for Europeans.
Again, this is just the “head start” period, which is a $20 upcharge from the standard pre-order, so chances are that we’ll see an even bigger flux when the rest of the players come in. If trying to fight for a spot in a public server isn’t your thing, and you have the money, you can also rent out a private server, which gives you full run of your own PvE progression area (or you can turn that off, if you so please).
Yesterday at Summer Game Fest, Funcom also released a dramatic launch trailer showing two friends’ journey into their separate stories in Arrakis.
(And for the readers wondering, yes, I have already been eaten by a sandworm, but only once.)
