Funcom has announced that Dune: Awakening will be released on May 20, 2025, alongside the launch of the Character Creator & Benchmark Mode.
With fans eager to explore Arrakis in Dune: Awakening, Funcom has confirmed that the MMO survival game will arrive on May 20, 2025, with pre-orders available soon on Steam. Alongside the release date announcement, the Character Creator & Benchmark Mode is available today for players eager to create their character and test scenes from the game to evaluate system capabilities.
Based on Frank Herbert’s sci-fi novels and the Dune films by Denis Villeneuve, Dune: Awakening is set in an alternate universe where the Fremen have disappeared, Paul Atreides does not exist, Lady Jessica gave birth to a girl and more. In this unusual yet intriguing timeline, you are a prisoner sent to Arrakis to discover why the Fremen have vanished. During your quest, explore the desert planet as you become an agent of either the Atreides or the Harkonnen, craft stillsuits to battle enemies and extract water for survival, and use various tools to grow your Desert Power.
Dune: Awakening will soon be available for pre-order for $49.99. Those who pre-order the game will receive the Terrarium of Muad’Dib—a base decoration featuring the desert mouse in a terrarium, allowing players to observe and admire the creature as it goes about its life.
In the meantime, players can install the Dune: Awakening Character Creator & Benchmark Mode. The Character Creator offers tools to fine-tune character details and select a home planet, caste and mentor—whether they are a Swordmaster, Bene Gesserit, Mentat or Trooper. Your starting abilities will be assigned based on the mentor you select, though you can access every school later in the game to mix and match skills to your liking. Once your character is created, it will be saved and imported into the game at launch.
But hold your sandworm—you need to determine if your PC hardware is optimized to run the game. Luckily, the Benchmark Mode will be available alongside the Character Creator, running scenes from the game—such as an ornithopter soaring through the skies and encountering a sandworm—while providing information on how well the game is running and its capabilities.
The Dune: Awakening will launch on PC via Steam on May 20, 2025, and soon be available to pre-order. With the Character Creator & Benchmark Mode available to download, the players will receive a code for an exclusive Frameblade Knife skin that can be redeemed at launch.
