Funcom Plans Layoffs as Dune: Awakening Moves to Long-Term Operations

Funcom is restructuring around its two ongoing online games, Dune: Awakening and Conan Exiles, and the change will include layoffs. The studio has not disclosed how many people will be affected, but leadership has made the reason for the reduction clear: the staffing demands of building a large game are not the same as those of supporting it after launch.

The news arrives alongside a separate leadership transition. Rui Casais, Funcom’s CEO and studio lead for 11 years, plans to step down at the end of 2026. Chief product officer Scott Junior is due to take over the CEO role.

That makes this a significant moment for the company on two fronts. Funcom is changing the shape of the team behind its biggest project while also preparing for a new chief executive. The immediate human cost is the most important part of the story: employees who helped bring a major online game through years of development now face an uncertain future as the organization contracts.

What Funcom has confirmed

Casais described Dune: Awakening as the biggest project Funcom has undertaken, one that required substantial development resources across its studios over many years. The game is now moving from full production into long-term post-launch development and operations, and the company says that requires a different organizational structure.

In practical terms, that transition means the studio cannot retain the team size and structure it needed during peak production. Layoffs are part of the plan, although neither the number of affected workers nor the specific departments involved have been provided.

Casais said his focus is on making the process as supportive as possible and treating affected colleagues with respect and transparency. Those are important stated commitments, but they do not answer the questions workers and players are likely to have: who is affected, when the process will be complete, and what the smaller long-term teams will look like. On those points, the available details remain limited.

Why “post-launch operations” changes a studio’s needs

Full production is the period in which a game is actively being built toward release. A project at that stage can need large groups across design, art, engineering, audio, testing, production, support functions and more, often working on a broad set of unfinished systems and content at the same time.

Post-launch development and operations is different. For an online game, it generally refers to the ongoing work of maintaining the live product: keeping services running, resolving bugs, responding to technical problems, planning updates, supporting players and delivering new content. It is still demanding work, and it can last for years. But it does not automatically require the same staffing profile as the final, intensive stretch of making and launching a game.

Funcom’s explanation is therefore about a production transition rather than an announcement that either of its online games is ending. The company is explicitly focusing on Dune: Awakening and Conan Exiles. That distinction matters. A layoff tied to a project’s shift from launch preparation to long-term support can happen even when the game remains central to a studio’s future.

It also should not be mistaken for a guarantee about the scale or cadence of future updates. Funcom has not detailed a post-restructure roadmap, staffing allocation, or particular content plans for either title. Players can reasonably infer that both games remain the company’s stated focus; anything more specific would go beyond what has been confirmed.

Dune: Awakening remains an active priority

The restructuring lands after Dune: Awakening received a single-player mode and a console release. Those developments underline why it would be misleading to frame the game as abandoned or finished. Funcom is characterizing it as an ongoing online project moving into long-term operations, not as a title being wound down.

Still, “active” does not mean unchanged. A long-term live team has different priorities from a launch team, and players may notice that difference in the kind of work a studio emphasizes. Reliability, operational support and sustained updates become particularly central once the initial release period has passed. The exact effect on Dune: Awakening has not been outlined, so it is too early to attach expectations to specific features or update schedules.

For Conan Exiles, the announcement similarly identifies the game as one of Funcom’s two ongoing online priorities. That establishes its strategic importance in the company’s stated plan, but no fresh content commitments or product changes were announced alongside the restructuring news.

A second recent round of redundancies

This is not the first time Funcom developers have faced layoffs in the recent past. The studio also cut roles last October, describing those departing staff members as cherished colleagues. At that time, the company said Dune: Awakening had shown considerable potential and called it the largest release in Funcom’s 32-year history.

The recurrence is difficult context for the employees now affected. The current announcement is not merely a theoretical reorganization diagram in a corporate presentation; it follows an earlier round of redundancies at the same company. Funcom has not said how the latest reductions compare with the previous ones, whether the groups overlap in any way, or how its overall headcount will change.

For the wider games business, the story is another reminder that a high-profile launch and a studio’s commitment to keep supporting a game do not necessarily protect every role created during peak development. Building an MMO-scale project can involve a period of exceptional staffing needs. When that work ends, companies may decide that maintaining the same workforce is no longer financially or structurally viable. That logic explains the business decision; it does not lessen its impact on the people losing their jobs.

Leadership changes arrive at the same time

Casais’s planned departure at the end of 2026 closes an 11-year run as studio lead. Scott Junior, currently Funcom’s chief product officer, is set to become CEO. The supplied information does not describe a change in the company’s stated product focus beyond the emphasis on Dune: Awakening and Conan Exiles, nor does it provide further details on Junior’s plans after taking the role.

Even so, the timing creates a substantial handover. The incoming CEO will inherit a company recalibrating from a massive production effort toward ongoing game operations, while navigating the aftermath of layoffs. It is a transition that puts the people side of game development and the operational side of live service work in the same frame.

What employees and players can watch for next

The most consequential outstanding information concerns the layoffs themselves. Funcom has yet to say how many staff members will leave, which offices or disciplines are involved, or whether additional changes are expected as the new organization takes shape.

For players, the clearest confirmed takeaway is narrower: both Dune: Awakening and Conan Exiles remain the company’s named ongoing online projects. It would be reasonable to watch for future operational and content communications, but neither game’s next steps should be assumed before Funcom details them.

For workers affected by industry turbulence, professional profiles and portfolios can become unexpectedly urgent parts of the job search. That broader reality sits behind the joke in the modern professional profile’s “side quest”: careers in games are built by people, not merely by release calendars or organizational charts.

Funcom’s announcement presents a familiar but painful contradiction. Dune: Awakening was large enough to demand years of investment and a peak-sized development organization; its new operational phase is precisely why the company says it can no longer sustain that organization. The games remain priorities. The employees leaving, however, are the people whose work helped make that future possible.