Dune: Awakening’s private servers have been confirmed at launch. Read on to learn more about the developers’ approach to its inclusion and how they work.
Dune: Awakening Private Servers Available Day One
Rentable Private Servers at Launch
Developer Funcom confirmed that Dune: Awakening will offer rentable private servers at launch. In a Steam blog post on June 2, the developers detailed how these servers will work and where players can rent them.
In past months, there were speculations and rumors surrounding the possibility of private servers in the game, which were then confirmed by the developers to be a supposed post-launch feature. During Funcom’s Q&A Roundtable in February 2025, Director Joel Bylos mentioned their plan of including it, but they were uncertain if it would be ready by launch.
However, Funcom’s latest Steam post stated that the team has progressed faster than they expected, and confirmed its availability. Although this is the case, private servers will be working differently. Despite being a private server, players within that server will still have access to the rest of Dune: Awakening’s servers and allow players to interact with even those outside of their own server through social hubs and the Deep Desert.
Renting a private server means having one Hagga Basin, which players can play with as one would in an official server. These private servers are connected to a World that consists of other private servers, and players can choose which World to connect to when they rent.
Funcom elaborated, "That means that you will still be able to take full advantage of Dune: Awakening’s large-scale multiplayer content and mechanics, including visiting the social hubs and the Deep Desert, to meet and play with people from any private server in the same World."
Moreover, they revealed which settings will be available on each private server. These include Security Zones, where players can designate which areas of their server will be PvP enabled, the option to include Taxation, and disabling Sandstorms from appearing. As of the moment, the admin control panel and character transfers will not be available at launch, and will be further discussed by the developers post-launch.
Funcom noted that the configurability of other settings will be up to the third-party server provider. These providers are GPORTAL, Nitrado, and xREALM, which players need to approach to rent their private servers. According to them, their studio does not set the prices for private server rental.
The Uniqueness of Dune: Awakening
Funcom explained, "In short: each server belongs to a World consisting of several other servers, and each of those share the same social hubs and Deep Desert. This allows us to retain a neighborhood-like feel to the Hagga Basin and provide persistent, freeform building, and other server-demanding mechanics you typically see in survival games."
They added, "We combine this with the large-scale multiplayer mechanics you would expect to find in MMOs where hundreds of players meet each other in social hubs and the Deep Desert to engage in social activities, trade, conflict, and more."
Their goal is to retain the large-scale multiplayer aspects of the game, as it is an integral part of the experience, and is connected with several features and mechanics."It was simply never an option for us to release ‘half a game’ for private servers," Funcom stated.
This led them to a model that, despite having fewer settings than typical MMO private servers have, will still highlight the game’s multiplayer experience.
The inclusion of private servers at launch will give players more ways to play the game, giving them more opportunities to explore Arrakis as they see fit. Dune: Awakening is set to be released on June 10, 2025 for PC, while releases for PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S will come at an unannounced later date. To stay up to date with the latest information about the game, check out our article below!
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Dune: Awakening Private Servers Announced
Dune Awakening Roundtable Q&A – ‘Privately Hosted Servers Are Under Discussion’
