Dune: Awakening, the highly anticipated Dune MMO made by Funcom, has previously had a beta that was under NDA for select players. But this weekend, there’s a new beta going on that players are free to stream and talk to their friends about. It’s available from now until this coming Monday, May 12 — and at first, players had to put their names into Funcom’s proverbial hat in hopes of receiving a key for it. Now, though, anybody who pre-orders the game can get an invitation and hop on in to virtual Arrakis.
The team at Funcom launched the beta yesterday afternoon and then, later that day, made the decision to open up the beta to include players who had pre-ordered. In a post on Bluesky, the developer announced the course reversal.
The change was apparently the result of some players’ complaints, as Funcom’s post states, “We heard your feedback on this.” It did at least only take the developer a few hours to make the decision; Funcom’s post about the beta’s official launch went up at 8:12 AM yesterday, and its subsequent post about adding pre-order players to the mix went up at 3:37 PM that same day. Still, though, that’s quite a few hours of missed potential playtime.
Dune: Awakening will be released for everyone on PC on June 10, 2025, after having been recently delayed from its initial release date of May 20.