FuncomThe latest Dune: Awakening fix seemed to have the opposite impact for those unfortunate enough to be settled in the wrong place at the wrong time. And now, developer Funcom is working hard to undo the damage for those affected players in the deep desert.An unspecified number of players, the majority of whom were likely exploring the end game of Dune: Awakening, unexpectedly lost their bases and all of their valuable loot this week after the developer published a quick patch for the game’s last major update. After expanding the designated PvE areas of the game’s world, Funcom had mistakenly released a patch switching a portion of those areas back to PvP areas. As a result, all of the player settlements and hard-earned resources within were wiped clean. According to a developer update from Funcom, the changes made by the patch weren’t supposed to take effect immediately. Instead, the changes should have only taken place after the next scheduled Coriolis Storm, the weekly scheduled reshifting of the world map’s PvP areas.Many Dune: Awakening players want to keep playing cooperatively with friends well into the endgame. | Funcom“We’re incredibly sorry that this happened and we want to acknowledge that this should have been handled better. We’ve changed our internal processes as a result of this and will be better in the future,” the developer said in a blog post. “We are working to reimburse vehicles and items (to the best of our ability) to players who were impacted by this.”Funcom said that players should get their materials, items, and vehicle components reimbursed by the end of the week under the game’s “Claim Rewards” tab in the pause menu.It’s been a couple since the developer began responding quickly to player feedback about Dune: Awakening’s endgame. While the developer intended for players to compete directly in the endgame to get the best resources in the game, the community has been vocal about wanting more areas where they can continue to farm what they need by fighting AI enemies in more challenging dungeons without being griefed by player trolls patrolling the skies with attack ornithopters. Adding fixes to exploits like the total aerial dominance of ornithopters has been the developer’s other priority.While I sympathize with players who lost everything at no fault of their own, growing pains like these are fairly standard for big live-service games like Dune: Awakening. Almost all games in this complex genre have had some early stumbling blocks this early in its life cycle. At the very least, Funcom is actively paying attention to its fanbase, trying to make things right.Ornithopters have proven to be a massive leg up when engaging in PvP. | FuncomWhen playing an ambitious game like this, I’ve come to expect issues like this to arise. Ironing out the kinks of managing a huge player base and the many moving parts involved is a far cry from making meta changes to a multiplayer shooter. While it’s not fun to have progress significantly hindered, how the developer handles these situations counts for a lot, in my opinion. Funcom is no stranger to the importance of keeping the community happy, as it was the developer behind the popular survival action RPG Conan Exiles. From looking at the game’s Reddit community, most players are being pretty understanding about the most recent error. Some players are even reassuring those impacted, claiming vehicles previously lost to issues like disconnects were restored promptly by the developer.Dune: Awakening is a very fun multiplayer survival game that perfectly captures the look, feel, and desperation of the books and films. The game has proven to be very popular, as it's already amassed more than a million players since launching last month, according to the developer. The game is set to make its console debut sometime later this year.Dune: Awakening is available on PC.