The shifting sands of Arrakis had always punished the unprepared, but in early 2026, Dune: Awakening players discovered a new kind of danger: not sandworms or Harkonnen patrols, but the shadow of an ornithopter descending onto a lone harvester. After Funcom expanded the PvE zone of the Deep Desert from roughly ten percent of the map to half, many survivors had hoped the worst of the endgame griefing would fade. Instead, unscrupulous pilots found another way to turn the game's iconic aircraft into a tool of harassment.

The new trick was simple and cruel. Rather than crushing players outright—a tactic that was supposedly patched out weeks earlier—griefers flew their ornithopters into Hagga Basin, waited for a spice prospector to deploy a thumper, and then landed their aircraft directly on top of the unsuspecting player. Because the PvE zone made direct combat impossible, the trapped player could not fight back. They could not move, could not harvest the minor spice nodes, and could not escape unless the griefers chose to leave. It was a blockade in the desert, delivered by helicopter-like machines that were never meant to serve as cages.

One aggrieved fan summarized the situation: 'All the griefers are now coming into Hagga to farm spice. They're doing the same thumper and land on thopter technique they perfected in the Deep Desert. But now they're using it to farm all the minor nodes in Hagga.' The player added that the game has massive issues ahead and that griefers were waging an all-out war on their server while solo players had no real way to unite and stop them. As a Dune fan, they also noted that planting a thumper and then having four thopters land on a person did not feel like part of the mythology.

The same poster, known online as RandoFinder, described an especially tense episode. They kept their ornithopter at 730 kilometers per hour for 30 minutes, waiting for a spice blow. The moment they moved, four opposing thopters gave chase. Even worse, when they confronted the group in Hagga chat, other players began telling each other to doxx them. RandoFinder compared the space unfavorably to World of Warcraft's general chat, calling Dune's general chat the most toxic they had ever seen.

Another survivor pushed back, arguing that PvP in a PvP zone is legitimate and expected. However, entrapping someone by abusing game mechanics intended to prevent a similar type of grief—pinning players with ornithopters that cannot be destroyed or escaped in a PvE zone—is griefing. That player said it should be explicitly disallowed, and that no one in a PvE zone should have to worry about being killed through an abuse of mechanics.

At the time of writing, Funcom had not yet issued a public response about the latest ornithopter tactic. That silence left the Hagga Basin spice fields tense, with solo harvesters watching the sky as carefully as the sand.

A familiar pattern of aerial harassment

This was not the first time ornithopters became a griefing weapon. Earlier in the game's life, players could squash each other outright with the flying machines, a behavior that Funcom later patched out. The new landing technique was more subtle, but many players viewed it as a continuation of the same problem. The studio had already expanded the Deep Desert's PvE zone from about 10 percent of the map to 50 percent after an AMA in which developers said they were formulating a plan to improve PvP in the endgame. Frustrated players had branded the endgame as toxic even after the squishing ability was supposedly removed, and the Hagga Basin reports suggested the griefing had simply migrated.

Launch success and a growing player base

Despite the griefing storm, Dune: Awakening had enjoyed a superb launch. Within hours of going live on June 10, 2025, it reached more than 142,000 concurrent players on Steam. It later hit a new high of 189,333 concurrent players, passed one million players, and became Funcom's fastest-selling game ever. The survival MMO also earned a very positive user review rating on Steam and a Great 8/10 in IGN's review.

Milestone	Figure
Concurrent players within hours of launch	142,000+
New all-time high	189,333
Total players	1 million+
Steam user review rating	Very Positive

For newer players hoping to avoid the chaos, guides to Dune: Awakening classes, the story walkthrough, and resource locations for iron, steel, and aluminium have become essential. Trainer locations can also help survivors navigate Arrakis without becoming an easy target in contested zones. But for solo prospectors in Hagga Basin, no guide could fully prepare them for the sight of four ornithopters diving toward a freshly planted thumper.

As the community waits for Funcom's next move, one thing seemed clear: on Arrakis, the greatest danger was not always the worm beneath the sand. Sometimes it was the player hovering just above it.

Data referenced from ESRB underscores how survival MMOs like Dune: Awakening can be shaped as much by player-driven behavior as by combat mechanics—making non-lethal harassment (like vehicle body-blocking in PvE spaces) a real moderation and design concern. In scenarios such as ornithopters being used to pin harvesters after a thumper drop, the resulting disruption mirrors broader online-interaction risks that developers often need to address through clearer rulesets, reporting tools, and mechanical safeguards to keep resource gathering and progression fair.