The awakening of the sand dunes So far, I’ve done quite a decent job solidifying that place in the MMO scene. This is a difficult scene to break into. But like all online multiplayer games, there is an army of con artists and bad actors to fight back. In an effort to make things fair for all players, developer Funcom has revealed that it will disable family sharing on Steam as it works to eliminate ramp-stretched exploits. Although it has already banned “hundreds of players” and wiped out many non-subtlely acquired Solaris, the studio says it needs to remove features when creating a way to permanently eliminate exploits.
The overall steam rating is still at the respectable “mostly positive” 75%, but a closer look at user reviews over the past 30 days shows a slightly different storyline – 63% of reviews are positive. It doesn’t look good when you’re trying to outdo so many of the best MMOs. The big reason for this drop is the ongoing complaints from legitimate players with scammers and exploits that are ruining the fun. Dune Awakening has tried to tackle many of these with many of these hotfixes over these weeks – something like this to remove the exploitation of replicating items – and of course, it prohibits them from being able to prove that they have committed fraud. But now they are taking more dramatic actions.
In a message to players outlining what they are trying to make Dune’s awakening even more fair, Funcom announces that it will disable sharing of the Steam family, a universal feature on Valve’s platform, but has opened the game to several major exploits.
“Unfortunately, we’ve seen this feature become frequently abused, so we’ve temporarily disable family sharing as part of our efforts,” the message reads. “I apologize to players who are legally using this feature. We are actively working on changes that will allow the system to be re-enabled as soon as possible. We don’t have ETAs to share at the moment, but we aim to implement those changes within this year.
That very vague time frame means it could take several months before family sharing is re-ensure. In more positive news, Funcom says it is “taking direct action against players using exploits, banning hundreds of players and removing a massive amount of exploited Solaris from the game.”
More generally, the studio also states that it recognizes “there are other issues caused by the cheat and fixes to the work intended to be implemented in the next patch.”
Hopefully, Funcom is all-in on improving the fraud situation, leading to lower reports from dissatisfied players and the ratings of that steam start to rise. I’ll continue posting about when it’s going to be reactivated for those who used family sharing for Dune Awakening.
For more information, see the Dune Awakening Base Building Guide. Or, if you’re thinking about a fresh challenge, head over to our list of the best survival games.
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