Conan Exiles “Paid Expansion” Announced; Funcom Plans to Invest $30-50 Million in New Dune Game

Today Funcom hosted its quarterly financial conference and they shared more information about Conan Exiles and the upcoming Dune survival game.

We hear from CEO Rui Casai and CFO Stian Drageset that Conan Exiles is continuing to show strong performance as a game-as-a-service. 

We also hear that the game is continuing to improve engagement over time. December was the best month for the game in terms of average PC users since the game’s launch in January 2017. 

Casais mentioned that the reaction from players to the introduction of mounts in December has been good, leading to considerably higher player activity in December and January. The steam rating of the game has also been increasing.

The developer plans to continue releasing DLC, and even more interestingly, they revealed that a “paid expansion” is in the works, coming in the second half of 2020.

They’ll talk more about it when the time is right. While it’s exciting, they cannot say much because “even saying that there is one, is something that the team prefers to keep under wraps.”

That being said, Casais also hinted at the end of the conference that this may be related to a “map.”

Speaking of the Dune open-world survival game, it’s currently in pre-production. The estimated investment budget for the game is $30-50 Million, which is bigger compared to Conan Exiles. 

In the current phase, the development team is fleshing out what the game is going to be, and when that’s done, they will have a more concrete idea of the final budget.

Funcom is “very excited” about the game and about the segment of persistent multiplayer survival games in general. 

The previously-revealed multiplayer online shooter based on the Mutant Chronicles IP is still in development but will release after the Dune game.

As a last interesting tidbit, Casais mentioned that he’d like to see Anarchy Online 2 happen one day.  

The game doesn’t have a release date or announced platforms. Conan Exiles is currently available for PC, PS4, and Xbox One.