Survival MMO Dune: Awakening got off to a strong start in June, but here at the tail end of July it's gotten stuck in a bit of quicksand. Even making changes to the controversial chopper-heavy endgame hasn't stopped recent Steam reviews from sliding to "Mixed," and despite several patches to squash exploits and hackers, cheating and griefing remains a problem.
A bit more bad news arrived today: Steam Family Sharing for Dune: Awakening has been switched off.
"We would like to share a quick update on cheats and exploits and inform you that we’re temporarily disabling Family Sharing," publisher Funcom posted on Steam and Discord, adding that it relates to the effort to prevent cheating: "We have unfortunately seen this feature abused frequently."
That's gonna be a pretty big blow to players who have had access to Dune: Awakening through sharing over Steam from family members (and let's face it, pals), and it sounds like the disabling of this feature could last quite a long while—as in months, or potentially even until 2026.
"We apologize to our players who legitimately used this feature," Funcom said. "We are actively working on changes that will allow us to re-enable the system as soon as possible. While we don’t have an ETA to share at the moment, we are aiming to implement those changes within this year. We will let you know as soon as we have a date.
Funcom didn't specify what sorts of exploits we being used by players on Family Sharing, though members of the Discord speculate it could be by using alt accounts to access Landsraad vendors on servers controlled by the opposite faction, to camp chests with high-tier loot and nab it when the respawn timer expires, or enjoy twice the amount of fiefs and vehicles as normally allowed to single character.
As always, it sucks that people using a feature as it's intended will be the ones hurt most by it being disabled. Cheaters will always find another way to exploit, but a lot of innocent players have just had their days ruined.
"In addition to fixing the causes [of cheating], we have also taken some direct action against players who used exploits, banning hundreds of players and removing large amounts of exploited Solaris from the game," Funcom said. "These efforts are currently ongoing: our investigations continue and our banhammer has more work to do."
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