Dune_ Awakening falls just shy of Steam's top 100 as it nets 142,000 players on its first proper lau

It's Dune June and Funcom's new survival MMO—Dune: Awakening—is finally here. Actually, it's been here since June 5, when people who forked over for its advanced access version got into the game, but now it's really here: [[link]] Funcom [[link]] is letting the hoi polloi in, [[link]] even those who spent a mere $50 on it. What's the world coming to?

Unsurprisingly, Dune: Awakening hit its highest-ever concurrent player peak in the immediate aftermath of its full launch, topping out at 142,050 players at the same time on June 10. It's still going strong: at time of writing, 110,000 players are skipping about Arrakis.

It's a strong showing, though it puts the game at 119 in , just between Clair Obscur and the open beta for New World: Aeternum. So not even in the top 100. Dismal failure. Funcom should probably just pack it in.

Or not. 142,000 players online simultaneously seems pretty good for a game that hit on a Tuesday, and I'd be flabbergasted if Dune didn't easily pip that record when everyone's home this weekend.

I'm curious to see how high it'll go. As I wrote in my several hundred years ago (January), it's the first and only survival-y, crafting-y game to actually capture and hold my attention, and I reckon I'm not alone in that. Our Chris Livingston has been enjoying the game in his , and even our online editor Fraser Brown—avowed enemy of survival games—is enjoying himself when he's not going slowly mad in an endless dungeon.

So I think this Dune thing has legs, which is kind of weird given it's a psychedelic tale about space-Algerian freedom fighters let by a warlord high out of his gourd on worm excrement, but who am I to condemn what the kids are into these days? All I know is it's a pretty fun game to drink people's blood in, and it seems over 100,000 people agree with me.