Dune: Awakening wants to promote itself with big streamers shortly before release, but it ends in disaster

Unfinished PvP, balancing issues, and embarrassing live glitches have caused massive criticism from the community for the upcoming survival MMO.

Shortly before the release of Dune: Awakening, Funcom wanted to turn up the heat one last time: With a final beta weekend and a large-scale streamer event, the hype for the survival MMO was supposed to be really fired up. But the campaign suddenly turned into a PR disaster – live in front of tens of thousands of viewers.

PvP showcase turns into an embarrassment

From May 9 to 12, 2025, Dune: Awakening’s biggest beta weekend to date took place – without an NDA, with tens of thousands of beta players and a huge LAN party broadcast live from London.

Big Twitch streamers such as Shroud, Lirik, and Tyler1 were supposed to showcase the game in spectacular PvP matches and thus drum up publicity. But even during the event, it became apparent that the survival MMO was still struggling with massive problems.

Instead of an exciting streamer battle, people were treated to a prime example of failed game design.

For example, shooter expert Shroud was completely humiliated in an unfair PvP situation. With a simple knife, one of the easiest weapons to craft in the game, his opponent Tyler1 was able to stun him repeatedly, mercilessly exposing the game’s half-baked balancing:

The developers felt compelled to respond live and promised to work on the issues before launch But the damage had already been done: the community saw in real time how unfinished the PvP was.

In particular, the excessively long time-to-kill, the lack of cover, and the huge but empty mapscaused frustration. In another situation, a player shot an opponent 15 times – without a shield – before he even fell. And even after that, the fallen player was able to revive himself.

YouTuber Eroktic draws a damning conclusion in his video :

However, the survival MMO isn’t just struggling with PvP issues; there are other problems as well, as our preview video shows:

Fan reactions range from schadenfreude to disappointment

The response was not long in coming, with the event being mercilessly mocked on Reddit:

• I wonder how many pre-orders were canceled today after people saw this sponsored stream. It looked terrible all day today, LMAO. – paperdodge
• Shroud with the best equipment is stunned by a simple knife stab with just one button press. In Dune lore, if someone attacks you quickly and you have a shield, the knife bounces off. – Kinda_cringe_mah_men
• The game looks really bad, and not just in combat. – Aznkiller

In addition, many old Conan Exiles veterans were reminded of past mistakes: Funcom focused heavily on PvP back then, but misjudged it enormously and alienated PvE players who care more about story, quests, and role-playing.

For you, this means that even though the developers have promised immediate improvements, you should wait and see how Funcom responds to the feedback before making a potential purchase.