Tis the season for publishers apologising for screwing up their DLC rollouts, apparently. Even as Paradox Interactive appear crown in hand before Crusader Kings 3 players to say sorry for the buggy Coronations DLC, Funcom are weathering a backlash of their own over communication problems with Dune: Awakening’s new paid Lost Harvest expansion.

In this case, some players are angry that they only got four new supplementary “Dune Man” building pieces in Lost Harvest, instead of a full and distinct building set. Some players are always angry about what videogames give them, of course - I’m still trying to think of an adequate alternative metaphor for “glass half empty” thinking in game spaces. But in this case, Funcom themselves have acknowledged that they misled players about the contents of the DLC pack.

“We realize that our communication around the contents of the DLC has not been clear enough,” reads an unattributed post on the official site. “The Lost Harvest DLC has a variety of content, with the focus being on the new side story and the Treadwheel, but the way the Dune Man building pieces were communicated created expectations that it would be a full building set rather than what was our intention: four new pieces to supplement the base game building sets.

“We understand the disappointment some of you have shared, and to rectify that, we will work on creating more Dune Man building pieces that we’ll make available to all owners of the Lost Harvest DLC,” it goes on. “We’re looking at adding around 15 more pieces and we aim to have these available late September or early October.”

It's worth noting that criticisms of Lost Harvest go beyond the meagre Dune Man offerings. The DLC pack sports a "mostly negative" user review consensus on Steam at the time of writing, with other complaints directed at the length of the expansion missions and the new Treadwheel vehicle being sort of meh. They're calling it a "cash grab", Cotton.

A few players have asked whether Funcom planned to release further Dune Man building pieces as Twitch Drops, aka giveaways in return for watching a stream. This was “never the plan”, the developers say. They add that they're working to make all previous Dune: Awakening Twitch Drop stuff “obtainable in the game”, with details to follow.

“As with many other games, Twitch Drops are important for us to support the creator ecosystem and give the game more visibility on the Twitch platform,” the devs note. “But, while these are free rewards available to everyone, we understand not everyone wants to or have the time to watch live streams and we want to make sure those people also get access to these items in-game sometime after the Twitch Drops campaign concludes.”

Being a hideous old git who still favours homely Youtube Let's Plays over later streaming services, I do not believe I have ever claimed a Twitch Drop, and I think Awakening’s building system is a waste of good desert, so colour me unmoved by all these developments. Still, if you’re mad as hell that you can’t Dune Man your entire crib, then bully for you, Dune-walker - the world is your sand trout.