Will Dune Awakening have private servers?

Will Dune Awakening have private servers? If you're after a truly anti-social experience, or only want to explore Arrakis' gorgeous desertscape with your closest compadres, we don't blame you. From Minecraft to Rust, to Funcom's other survival title, Conan Exiles, private servers have become a staple of the genre. But will Dune Awakening follow suit?

Dune Awakening takes an alternate approach not only to Frank Herbert's canon but also to the way it does its networking. While maps in survival games are typically tied to a single server, the upcoming PC game utilizes server meshing, hosting multiple dynamic map regions across servers to create one, unified experience. This makes things particularly tricky when it comes to leasing out private servers, and has given cause to doubt that Dune Awakening private servers will ever be a thing.

Dune Awakening will have rentable private servers at launch, albeit with limited functionality. Funcom confirmed the feature on June 2, 2025, just days before launch.

Due to Dune Awakening's intricate server meshing, only the Hagga Basin portion of the game will be rentable from third-party server hosts, who will also host the public parts of the mesh. As these private instances will still ultimately feed into the shared multiplayer experience, Funcom won't be offering nearly as much customization to them as was available in Conan Exiles. Here are the settings the studio is making available:

• Security zones: Enable or disable security zones as you please, toggling server-wide PvP or restricting it to specific pockets of the map.
• Taxation: Enable or disable server taxation.
• Sandstorms: Enable or disable sandstorms.

While this puts a dampener on any hopes for tweaking harder economic settings, it's important to remember that Funcom needs to retain control over how the economy operates. Yes, Dune Awakening is a survival game, but it's also every part an MMO, and private servers should never serve as a pay-to-win tactic.

It was initially a toss-up as to whether Dune Awakening would have private servers. In an August 2024 interview with TheGamer, Bylos highlighted the possibility of renting out private servers to players. However, due to the studio's vision for game balance and the end-game experience, server-wide Dune Awakening mods, like those available in Conan Exiles, wouldn't be available.

Later, in a February 2025 chat with WCCF Tech, Bylos expanded on this, noting that the studio had been discussing ways in which it could directly rent out private server space without coughing up code, citing how Bethesda handles Fallout 76. In hindsight, leasing out instances of a specific area was always going to be the only real play.

And that's all you need to know about Dune Awakening private servers. We'll be sure to update this guide as soon as we learn more, so check back as we close in on the Dune Awakening release date. In the meantime, check out whether you'll be able to snag Dune Awakening on Game Pass for no extra cost when it arrives.