Dune Awakening beta start time and how you can join the fight

Daily Mirror

09-05-2025

Arrakis is in need of a protector, and it could be you, as you have the opportunity to access Dune Awakening ahead of time to test its first hours of its story.
Your chance to show Arrakis who's boss is finally here with a wide beta test for Dune Awakening, giving you access to the first portion of gameplay for the survival title.
If you watched Paul Atreides climb to become the Lisan Al'Gaib, Duke of Atreides and steward to Arrakis and thought, 'I bet I could do that,' I've got some bad news for you. It's almost impossible, and frankly, you're going to have a hard enough time simply finding water when your Arrakeen adventure finally begins.
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Dune Awakening is almost here, and is set to give you the chance to test your survival skills on the least hospitable planet in the charted universe. It's been a very exciting prospect, especially since Denis Villeneuve 's movies, but getting the chance to explore Frank Herbert 's iconic world is reason enough to be excited, full of ruins, bases and face-offs with the Shai Hulud themselves. It comes at a good time, too, as survival fans are being treated with peeks behind the curtain after the recent Prologue: Go Wayback playtest.
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The game's incoming beta is set to offer you a chance to try it out for yourself before the game launches, but it already comes with some alterations to the core game – as the beta only offers a look into the first few chapters of the planned game, it will ask you to select a class between four choices, rather than give you the free reign to unlock them yourself in skill trees, as you won't earn enough skill points to bag them all.
Changes are bound to be made, but that doesn't mean that this won't be a compelling peek into Arrakis' gameplay – and the Dune Awakening beta is a great opportunity to get a taste of what we'll get with the final game. So, when is the Dune Awakening beta start time, and how can you get involved? Here's what you need to know.
Dune Awakening beta start time and how to join
The Dune Awakening beta start time is 5am PDT / 8am EDT / 1pm BST on Friday, May 9, with the beta coming to a close at 2.59pm PDT / 5.59pm EDT / 10.59 BST on Monday, May 12. The beta, unlike previous opportunities to play a build of the game, has no NDA, so expect a lot of footage and details to be revealed to the public about the game during this time.
If you want to join the beta, there are three steps to complete, with the completion of all three steps increasing your chances of earning a code. First, you'll want to add the game to your wishlist on Steam and click the 'Request Access' button via its Steam page. Sign up with your email on the Dune Awakening website, and then failing that, you'll want to tune into the Global LAN Party Broadcast on the Funcom Twitch channel, where the game's team will be dishing out tens of thousands of beta codes.
There are a few options to consider, but it could be worth ticking through all of them if you want the chance to play the first 20-25 hours of Dune Awakening's gameplay. Though you might have a little less time than others if you get your code from the LAN Party stream, you'll at least have access for a couple of days, so you can make the most of your Arrakeen holiday. May thy knife chip and shatter.