Key Notes
- Funcom has begun restructuring around Dune: Awakening and Conan Exiles, confirming workforce reductions without disclosing the number of affected employees.
- Chief product officer and 25-year company veteran Scott Junior will succeed Rui Casais, who will help manage the transition before leaving at the end of 2026.
- The changes follow Dune: Awakening’s September console launch and a 2025 layoff round that led to the closure of Metal: Hellsinger developer The Outsiders.
Funcom has announced layoffs and a leadership transition as it concentrates on the long-term development of Dune: Awakening and Conan Exiles. Chief product officer Scott Junior will become chief executive, succeeding Rui Casais, who will leave the company at the end of 2026.
The Norwegian developer and publisher said its restructuring process is beginning but did not disclose how many employees would be affected. In its announcement, Funcom attributed the changes to completing Dune: Awakening’s major development cycle and moving toward ongoing operation and expansion of its two survival games.
From Launch Production to Ongoing Support
Casais said Dune: Awakening had required years of substantial development resources across Funcom’s studios. The company’s position is that its next phase needs a different organization from the one assembled for peak production, even though it would have preferred to retain everyone who helped build the game.
Funcom said it would not share further details until the process had concluded, citing respect for the employees involved. There is therefore no confirmed headcount or studio-by-studio breakdown to attach to this round of cuts.
For players, the stated priority is continued content and support for existing games. For staff, that commitment comes alongside a smaller organization. Keeping a game running and expanding it after launch remains development work, but Funcom says it cannot sustain its peak-production staffing structure for that work.
Dune: Awakening first launched on PC in June 2025 and expanded to PlayStation 5 and Xbox on September 22, 2026. Its console launch arrived with a single-player mode and customizable gameplay settings, also released on PC. Funcom said players could adjust elements including harvesting rates, experience gain and death penalties.
That update also added the Filmic Archive DLC and further story content. Those features have already been released; they are separate from the company’s broader promise to keep expanding Dune over the coming years. The restructuring announcement does not provide a new content calendar.
Conan Exiles Enhanced likewise has an active update program. On October 6, Funcom and Inflexion Games released Part Two of Legacy of the Giant-Kings, a free four-part story arc. The update introduced Rifts, additional sorcery spells and Mi-Go encounters, with two further chapters still to come.
Scott Junior Succeeds Rui Casais
Junior is a 25-year Funcom veteran whose experience includes post-launch development and live operations on Conan Exiles, The Secret World and Age of Conan. He also served as executive producer on Dune: Awakening, overseeing teams bringing it to PC, PlayStation and Xbox.
His appointment places an executive already involved in both priority games in charge of the next phase. Junior said his focus would be organizing Funcom to expand them through new content and gameplay while maintaining a close relationship with their communities.
Casais will depart after 22 years at Funcom, including 11 as CEO. He joined as a programmer in 2004, later became chief technology officer and took the chief executive role in 2015. Until his departure, he will work with Junior on the restructuring and leadership handover.
A Second Restructuring After the 2025 Cuts
Funcom also restructured in October 2025. That round affected The Outsiders, the Stockholm studio behind Metal: Hellsinger. Founder and creative director David Goldfarb confirmed on October 6 that the studio would close after its team was affected by Funcom’s layoffs.
The new announcement should be distinguished from those earlier departures. It follows the completion of Dune’s console rollout and sets out a new leadership arrangement, while leaving the scale of the current workforce reduction undisclosed.
We covered layoffs at Eternal Strands developer Yellow Brick Games, where the scale also remained unclear. At Funcom, the stated direction is established: continued development of Dune and Conan, with the details of the workforce reduction still to follow.
