Funcom is cutting jobs as it moves Dune: Awakening out of full production and into long-term live operations. The Funcom layoffs arrive alongside a leadership change: CEO Rui Casais will step down at the end of 2026 after 11 years in charge of the studio.
Chief product officer Scott Junior will replace Casais as CEO. The Norwegian studio says it will now concentrate on its two ongoing online games, Dune: Awakening and Conan Exiles. Casais confirmed the restructuring in a statement to GamesIndustry.biz, which was first to report the news.
Why Funcom layoffs follow the end of peak development
Casais framed the cuts as a consequence of the size of the project. “Dune: Awakening has been the biggest project we have ever undertaken, requiring many years of significant development resources across our studios,” he said.
He added that the next phase of the game needs a different shape. “Moving from full production into long-term post-launch development and operations requires a different organization.”
Casais also said directly that the studio cannot keep its current headcount. “While we would have wanted everyone who helped build Dune: Awakening to continue with us, we cannot sustain the size and structure required during peak development as we move into this next phase.”
Funcom has not said how many employees are affected or which of its studios will lose staff. Casais closed his statement by saying his focus is on making the process “as supportive as possible for everyone affected” and treating colleagues “with the respect and transparency they deserve.”
Dune: Awakening is still adding content
The Funcom layoffs come while Dune: Awakening is still growing. The survival MMO, set in Frank Herbert’s universe, recently added a single-player mode and launched on consoles. Both updates widened its potential audience beyond the PC players who picked it up at launch.
However, a game can keep releasing updates and still need a smaller team. Live service games typically require large crews during production, when systems, maps and content pipelines are being built from scratch. After launch, the work shifts toward patches, seasonal content and server operations, and studios often scale down to match.
A second round of cuts in 12 months
This is not the first time the Dune: Awakening team has faced job losses. In October 2025, Funcom told GamesIndustry.biz that it had said goodbye to “cherished colleagues” in an earlier round of redundancies.
At that time, the studio still described Dune: Awakening in strong terms. It said the game “has already shown incredible potential” and called it “the biggest release we’ve had in our 32-year long history of making great games.”
Taken together, the two rounds of Funcom layoffs show how the studio is resizing around a smaller post-launch operation. Meanwhile, the leadership handover means Scott Junior will take charge of that slimmer organization from the start of 2027.
Funcom has not given a timeline for the job cuts or said whether any upcoming Dune: Awakening content plans will change as a result.