If, like the MOP writers, you keep half an eye on Steam Charts for one of many clues to gauge an MMO’s health, you’ve probably been lending that eye out part-time to Dune Awakening. Since its launch in June, it’s seen a precipitous, though thoroughly predictable and explicable, decline in players, from 102K to 18K average logins and 189K peak to 36K. But even still, those are strong numbers for a live service game. And we drop those numbers here to lend context to a newly released Gamescom interview with Joel Bylos from Radio Times Gaming, in which Bylos discusses the ebb and flow of launches.

“[I’m] very happy with how it launched,” he says, “and you know, things slowed down over summer as they do. So yeah, hoping that like more people will get into the game. I still think there’s a lot of people who haven’t picked up the game who would love it. I’m hoping to sell more, but at the moment, yeah, I’m quite happy with how it went.”

In response to further questions about metrics, Bylos discusses retention and acquisition too – and how the game’s monetization really works.

“We don’t rely on old players; we rely on new players in a way. So it’s actually selling new copies of the game because the game’s $50. There’s no subscription; there’s no monetization apart from [today’s newly launched] DLC. But we’re not charging people to play the game on an ongoing thing, so those players who are still logging in and playing are just playing because they enjoy the game. And we’re not asking them for money right now, right? So I think from the business perspective, our actual biggest goal is that lots more people come and enjoy the game. […] So I don’t think our business relies on that [makes a hand motion to simulate a population graph] – like, the CCU [concurrent user count] isn’t as important to the business model of the game. However, it’s nice if people keep playing the game because there’s a political endgame. We want people to bouncing off each other. We want the Atreides and Harkonnen to have their conflict.”

That philosophy is particularly evidence in the game’s series of free play events, as the one coming up this week is even more generous than the one last month. In fact, Bylos then points out that it’s “a healthy way to play games” to play Dune, leave, and then come back for DLC. Funcom is actually counting on it. As always with Bylos, it’s worth a listen.