Today, Funcom has announced that Update 1.4 for Dune: Awakening will arrive on May 19, alongside The Water Wars DLC, the final piece of the game's Season Pass.
The free update adds two new Overland Map locations: Wind Pass, described as an old Harkonnen tech hub where players will encounter the Water Shippers faction, and The Old Quarry Testing Station, a scalable endgame area where a devious character named Dr. Jalanta awaits in a secret lab. Additional Landsraad Missions are also included, expanding the new endgame framework introduced in Chapter 3. Notably, Funcom has been upfront that Update 1.4 does not add new story content. The developers stated they want to use the update to prioritize highly requested systems that enhance player agency, while the next story chapter will come in a future update.
The Water Wars DLC, priced at $9.99 (or included in the Season Pass at $24.99/€24.99), introduces a set of building pieces and cosmetics themed around the so-called Water Shippers, the ruthless dynasty that controls most of Arrakis's water trade.
Update 1.4 builds on what has been a significant recovery arc for the game. Dune: Awakening peaked at nearly 189K concurrent players on Steam at launch last June, but saw its numbers fall sharply through the summer and autumn, dropping below 2,000 concurrent players in September 2025 following the Lost Harvest DLC. The release of Chapter 3 in February 2026, which Funcom described as the game's largest update to date, helped arrest the decline, pushing the monthly average back up to around 8.6K players.
Perhaps the most impactful recent change, however, came earlier this month with Update 1.3.20, when Funcom made PvP fully optional across the game (including the previously mandatory Deep Desert endgame zone), switching to a PvE-first policy. For months, players who had no interest in player-versus-player combat had found themselves locked out of top-tier content and resources unless they accepted the risk of being ganked. Funcom acknowledged the problem directly in a developer update, stating that PvP conflict must be optional and incentivized rather than required for progression. The change was widely praised by the community as long overdue.
Dune: Awakening is currently available on PC via Steam, but it's expected to launch on Sony's PlayStation 5 and Microsoft's Xbox Series S and X consoles later in 2026.
About the author: With over two decades of experience in gaming journalism, Alessio Palumbo has led the gaming vertical at Wccftech since August 2015. He started working at a young age for Italian websites like Everyeye.it, Gamestar.it, Nextgame.it, and Multiplayer.it before kickstarting the indie English-language publication Worlds Factory as its founder and Editor in Chief. In the last decade, he has coordinated the overall output of Wccftech's gaming section, managed PR relations, assigned reviews, produced daily news coverage, edited gaming content as needed, and delivered game reviews. Arguably, his trademark content is the long series of exclusive developer interviews that have been cited by Wikipedia and by the biggest news media and gaming publications. His passion for technology also makes him knowledgeable when it comes to gaming hardware and tech. His favorite genres include RPGs, MMORPGs, and action/adventure games.
Follow Wccftech on Google to get more of our news coverage in your feeds.
