Good news for lovers and sand, spice, and/or worms: Dune: Awakening’s beta weekend, which started today and will run until May 12, is now open to anyone who preordered the survival MMO.
It’s also mildly perplexing news because, y’know… why weren’t players who preordered the $50 game on Steam automatically included in the beta weekend in the first place?
“Everyone who has pre-ordered Dune: Awakening can now also access the Beta Weekend!” Funcom announced on social media a few hours after the beta went live.
“We heard your feedback on this. If you already own or decide to pre-order any of the editions this weekend, you should now also see a Beta Weekend product in your Steam library.”
There were different ways to obtain one of the “tens of thousands” of Dune: Awakening beta keys Funcom released in the run-up to the weekend, but I found it a little strange that preorderers weren’t guaranteed one. Even people who shelled out for the game ahead of launch had to hope for some luck in a giveaway to play this weekend, even though beta access is a pretty common reward for buying in advance.
Whatever the reasoning, Funcom eventually figured out it wasn’t a great idea to deny its biggest fans access to the weekend beta and have set things right.
Of course, the turnaround raises another issue: a lot of people who preordered Dune: Awakening and wound up with a beta key through a giveaway have already claimed it—which is a bit of a waste because that giveaway key could have gone to a player who hadn’t preordered.
This isn’t a huge disaster or anything, but it does feel unnecessarily sloppy, especially since just yesterday Funcom said “This is not our first rodeo” when it comes to launching MMOs and survival games. That statement was in reference to server stability, but this beta weekend issue feels like a bit of a stumble right out of the gate.
