Beta Weekend for Dune: Awakening Starts Today

For those excited on the release of Dune: Awakening, there's a chance to experience Arrakis early. Funcom has announced a large-scale beta weekend that begins May 9 and ends May 12.

The Beta features the first 20-25 hours of Dune: Awakening along with most of Act 1. Players get to create their own character, crash into Arrakis, and try to survive the sun, roaming bandits, and of course, the sandworms. It starts with choosing School of the Imperium to follow and then craft a shelter as well as their first weapon and sandbike. Once that's done they can then venture deeper into the sands.

What makes this Beta different from the previous ones is that there's no NDA. Meaning players can share any info they want with friends, or even stream the game for everyone to see.

System Specifications

Those excited about the beta need to have these minimum system specifications for the PC:

• OS: Windows 10 64-bit (or newer)

• Processor: Intel Core i5-7400, AMD Ryzen 3 1200

• Memory: 16 GB RAM

• Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 (6GB), AMD Radeon 5600XT (6GB)

• Storage: 60 GB available space (SSD required)

Meanwhile, the recommended specs are:

• OS: Windows 10 64-bit (or newer)

• Processor: Intel Core i7-10700K, AMD Ryzen 5 2600X

• Memory: 16 GB RAM

• Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 (8GB), AMD Radeon 6700XT (12GB)

• Storage: 75 GB available space (SSD required)

The only caveat with the beta is that progress won't be carried over in the official version. Which means that there’s a need to start fresh. Check out the complete details of the beta here.

Dune: Awakening is releasing on June 10. It offers an open world and multiplayer survival game on a massive scale. In reality, it’s more than just survival since the game offers a large-scale, persistent, and highly immersive world that has social hubs bustling with other players, server-wide politics and intrigue, and even a cinematic storyline that’s sure to leave players at the edge of their seat.

In this universe, the Fremen have vanished and Paul Atreides was never born. This is because Lady Jessica obeyed the Bene Gesserit and gave birth to a girl. Meanwhile, Duke Leto Atreides himself has survived the assault on Arrakeen and is now locked in a brutal conflict against the Harkonnen over Arrakis and its precious spice. This rather unique but still familiar take on the iconic sci-fi universe of Dune has players start as a prisoner sent to Arrakis and learn more about why the Fremen disappeared.

Wishlist or pre-purchase Dune: Awakening on Steam now.