Funcom Restructures Around Survival Games as CEO Rui Casais to Depart

Funcom, the Norwegian developer behind Dune: Awakening and Conan Exiles, has begun a company-wide restructuring that will end with layoffs and a leadership change at the top. CEO Rui Casais will leave the company at the end of the year after 22 years at the studio, including 11 years as CEO. Chief Product Officer Scott Junior will succeed him once the reorganization is complete.

Casais framed the move as a consequence of Dune: Awakening wrapping full production. “Dune: Awakening has been the biggest project we have ever undertaken, requiring many years of significant development resources across our studios,” he said in a statement. “Moving from full production into long-term post-launch development and operations requires a different organization.”

In a press release, Funcom said the restructuring will “guarantee Funcom’s focus on Dune: Awakening and Conan Exiles going forward” and that the company “remains committed to supporting, expanding, and growing these games and their communities for years to come.” Conan Exiles got a substantial Enhanced edition this year, the company noted, and will be expanded further. The release added that “as Funcom aligns its organization with this new focus, the company will also enter a period of restructuring,” with the size of the organization set to shrink. Funcom has not shared how many employees will be affected. It will not give further details “out of respect for the employees involved” until the process concludes.

Junior has been at Funcom 25 years. He served as Executive Producer on Dune: Awakening and will take over once Casais departs. “Leading the continued growth of Dune: Awakening and Conan Exiles is a big responsibility, and I am honored to be entrusted with it,” he said. “My focus going forward will be ensuring Funcom is organized in the best way possible to expand these games for many years to come through new content and gameplay.”

This is Funcom’s second round of post-launch layoffs tied to Dune: Awakening. The studio previously cut staff in October 2025, shortly after the survival MMO shipped, and closed Swedish developer The Outsiders (Metal: Hellsinger), which Funcom had acquired in 2021. Dune: Awakening launched in June 2025 and sold a million copies in two weeks. That made it the fastest-selling game in Funcom’s history, but its longer-term player count has dropped substantially. PvP (player-vs-player) and faction-based endgame, in which players join one of multiple in-game groups and compete for territory, saw a mixed community response. Funcom pulled back from the MMO angle last month by adding solo play and PvE-only modes.

Tencent, which acquired Funcom in 2020, has been taking a “more assertive” approach with its studio portfolio in the last eighteen months. It has divested other businesses including Secret Mode, Splash Damage, and Bulkhead Studios. Earlier Tencent comments describe Funcom as designing games “to be live services” (games updated for years after launch rather than sold as a one-time product) and “support[ing] them on that journey.” That language lines up with today’s announcement, and with the Bulkhead split covered earlier in WARDOGS Season 2 Bulkhead admits ‘We F***ed Up’.

Funcom joins a string of studios that have trimmed, restructured, or pivoted mid-year. CD Projekt Red’s Project Hadar is years from pre-production with only 33 developers. Konami’s leadership downplayed AI’s near-term impact on development. Last week DayZ creator Dean Hall open-sourced his Brutal Engine as his studio wound down its project. Each decision points to a different problem (a project too early, a publisher’s philosophy, or an engine without a game) but all are smaller versions of the same shift. Publishers are shedding in-development work to support what they already ship.

For example, Funcom’s roadmap now narrows to two survival games instead of any new IP. CCO Joel Bylos told GamesIndustry last month the studio is “not ready to start a new game,” calling plans for future projects “wispy thoughts in the back of our heads.” That framing, paired with today’s CEO transition, makes the new direction concrete: live operations over greenlight work. Compare that with an Oct 14 report on Total War SHOGUN 2 being pulled after backlash, Jagex cancelling RuneScape Reignited before its December 2 launch, and the Big Walk dev citing a BDS-driven boycott in confirming no Xbox version. Studios are walking back bets in every direction at once, which is why this round stands out: Funcom is one of the larger post-launch survival pivots so far, and Tencent’s portfolio moves are part of the same trend.

The reorganization reframes Funcom from a studio shipping new titles into one running and growing two live survival games. The most concrete news today is the CEO transition. Casais has been the public face of the studio since Tencent took over, and Junior’s elevation from a product role on Dune: Awakening signals what the next phase looks like. Both prior cuts, the 2025 layoffs and the October 2025 closure of Outsiders, focused on studios or teams outside Funcom’s survival-MMO core. This round appears to bring the same logic inside. Funcom’s silence on numbers, framed as respect for the people involved, is standard phrasing for a layoff round that will land in industry coverage over the next few weeks when severance packages and union notices start surfacing. Players will feel it most directly if either live game sees further delays or scope trims on previously promised content, since that is what post-launch support teams ship.

Edited by Kerwin Stewart, Editor-in-Chief · How we report