Doing a victory lap, Dune: Awakening publisher reveals that 1 million players have already huffed 6 billion grams of spice

A Dune scavenger with glowing eyes
(Image credit: Funcom)

Dune: Awakening is doing a well-deserved victory lap at the moment. Following its launch on June 10, the survival MMO has already reached the impressive milestone of 1,000,000 players, according to the publisher.

That makes Dune: Awakening Funcom's fastest-selling game, even beating out its 2018 survival sandbox, Conan Exiles. The million player tally isn't the only set of digits Funcom has revealed: here's an infographic with all sorts of exceptional stats. Curious about the rate of sandworm incidents in Arrakis? Keep reading.

(Image credit: Funcom)

The statistics are pretty revealing. For instance, did you know that over 6 billion grams of spice have been consumed? In fairness, you aren't all just getting zooted. Spice sand in Dune: Awakening can be used to make valuable items, such as powerful consumables, or certain high-level schematics. Some abilities require you to consume spice melange, too.

Probably completely unrelated to this fact is that 816,730 players have been eaten by sandworms. Spice sand can be found in open dunes, and harvesting it is noisy, and that noise attracts sandworms, but I'm sure we're talking correlation, not causation here. Which means there's no reason for space-OSHA to get involved in the way of spice flowing.

A rather more concerning statistic is that 56,253 litres of blood have apparently been extracted from Muad'Dib: Cute, tiny mouselike creatures that nonetheless have blood in them, and blood can be drank, and boy howdy is the desert thirst-inducing.

Ornithopters are an unsurprisingly popular mode of transport, with over half a million being constructed. I wonder how many ignoble deaths in the PvP-enabled deep desert—628,807 and counting—can be attributed these hovering menaces. Most of them, I'll bet.

All in all, not a bad showing for Dune: Awakening's first two weeks, issues with PvP aside. Funcom seems to have another winner on its hands—who knew the harsh, unrelenting, worm-filled deserts of Arrakis could be so appealing? Or maybe you sickos just really like drinking mouse juice boxes. I'm not judging, at least, not in public.

Dune: Awakening trainer locationsDune: Awakening starting tipsDune: Awakening fast-travelDune: Awakening research menuDune: Awakening classesDune: Awakening repair

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Dune: Awakening repair: How to fix your kit

Harvey Randall
Staff Writer

Harvey's history with games started when he first begged his parents for a World of Warcraft subscription aged 12, though he's since been cursed with Final Fantasy 14-brain and a huge crush on G'raha Tia. He made his start as a freelancer, writing for websites like Techradar, The Escapist, Dicebreaker, The Gamer, Into the Spine—and of course, PC Gamer. He'll sink his teeth into anything that looks interesting, though he has a soft spot for RPGs, soulslikes, roguelikes, deckbuilders, MMOs, and weird indie titles. He also plays a shelf load of TTRPGs in his offline time. Don't ask him what his favourite system is, he has too many.

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