Sea of Thieves is a 2018 action-adventure game developed by Rare and published by Microsoft Studios. The game was released in March 2018 for Windows and Xbox One; it was one of the earliest first-party games released for Xbox Game Pass subscribers. The player assumes the role of a pirate who completes voyages from different trading companies. The multiplayer game sees players explore an open world via a pirate ship from a first-person perspective. Groups of players encounter each other regularly during their adventures, sometimes forming alliances, and sometimes going head-to-head.
Sea of Thieves was conceived in 2014. Rare was inspired by players of PC games such as Eve Online (2003), DayZ (2018), and Rust (2018) who used the game tools to create their own stories. Rare explored different settings, such as vampires and dinosaurs, before settling on a pirate theme inspired by the Pirates of the Caribbean films and The Goonies (1985). The game features a progression system that only unlocks cosmetic items as the development team wanted to encourage both casual and experienced players to play together. Rare departed from its reputation for secrecy during Sea of Thieves development, inviting fans to test the game's early builds.
Sea of Thieves received mixed reviews upon launch; critics praised the ship combat, multiplayer, visuals, and physics, but criticized the progression, gameplay, and lack of content. Rare envisioned Sea of Thieves as a "game as a service" and has released numerous content updates after the initial release, which has improved its overall reception. Some of the latest updates include Season 8 releasing a new on-demand player versus player naval battle featuring the noble Guardians of Fortune and the opposing faction of the Servants of the Flame. Sea of Thieves was a commercial success and became Microsoft's most successful original intellectual property of the eighth generation, attracting more than 30 million players by June 2022. An enhanced version of the game was released for the Xbox Series X/S in November 2020.
Gameplay
Sea of Thieves is a first-person perspective action-adventure. At the beginning of the game, the player selects their procedurally generated player avatar. The game is set in a shared world, which means groups of players will encounter each other throughout their adventures. Solo and duo players sail around in a nimble sloop while players playing in a group control a larger three-person brigantine or a four-person galleon cooperatively by assuming different roles; such as steering the ship, manning the cannons, navigating, boarding enemy ships, and scouting from the crow's nest. Players can save the loadout of the ship, customize the ship's hull, figurehead, sails and captain's quarters, as well as name their ship. Occasionally players may encounter hostile players who may attack them with cannonballs or board their ship. If areas under the deck take damage, water will flow in and cause the ship to gradually sink. Players need to patch up the holes with planks of wood and bail out water using buckets. Alliances can be established with other player crews. When a treasure item is sold by a member of an alliance, all other members receive gold and reputation points at half of the item's normal value. Ships in an alliance fly the same flag and are visible on the map tables on other ships in the alliance. Forming an alliance does not prevent players from attacking each other. If a player dies, there is a limited window of time during which they are able to be revived by crewmates or allied player crews and after which they are sent to a ghost ship known as the Ferry of the Damned where they wait until they can respawn on their crew's ship. A competitive multiplayer mode named "Arena" was introduced in the Anniversary update; it allows up to six teams of players to compete against each other by gathering silver in smaller maps. Due to low player participation, this game mode was subsequently removed in a later update. A player-versus-environment mode named "Safer Seas" is set to be introduced in December 2023.
