Funcom Partners With NUKKLEAR To Develop Their Still-Untitled Dune Game

Good news for Dune fans desperately waiting for news on Dune MMO. The studio has just announced that its partnered with German developer NUKKLEAR to work on the game as co-developers. The bad news is that it looks like it’s not going to be a full-fledged MMO as most of us had hoped.

“In 2019, Funcom announced that it had secured the rights to make a game based on the popular sci-fi franchise, Dune. The untitled project will take inspiration from Funcom’s most successful title, Conan Exiles, and be an online multiplayer survival game. After investment from Tencent, the Dune project greatly expanded its scope, and NUKKLEAR has been brought on to assist in completing it.”

NUKKLEAR added that they’ve received €1.6 million from a German Federal Government Grant which the studio will be using to the development of the yet-untitled Dune game. The team’s experience with building large online 3D games and their recent work on modern helicopter shooter Comanche will also be invaluable in fleshing out the game world and its mechanics.

“As the Dune open-world survival game is the most ambitious project we’ve ever undertaken at Funcom, having skilled and reliable partners is an absolute must,” said Funcom CEO Rui Casais. “With NUKKLEAR we have just that. We’ve benefited particularly from their expertise in vehicular-based gameplay, but I know them as highly skilled and creative game developers in general.”