Today Rare released a video giving an update on the state of its shared-world adventure game Sea of Thieves.
First of all, we learn that the first client update is coming tomorrow. It includes 170 different changes including bug fixes, performance optimization, stability improvements, and more.
Unfortunately, in order to get the patch out as soon as possible, the download will have the same size as the full client. It will be released in tomorrow’s maintenance window from 9:00 AM to 2:00 PM UK time. The download will be made available as soon as possible in that window so that players can get a headstart on it, and be closer to finished when the servers come back up.
The goal is to make those maintenance windows as short and infrequent as possible down the line.
Studio Head Craig Duncan and Executive Producer Joe Neate also mention that the demand for the game has been “off the charts” and “super-humbling” with tons of people playing, sharing, and enjoying the game. The developer has seen “record numbers,” much higher than in the beta.
While that’s awesome, it also causes scale issues.
One of the issues players have been saying are delays in unlocks and rewards. While this was improved and optimized server-side, there is still some work to be done.
Achievements have been temporarily deactivated during the weekend to free up some server bandwidth and allow everyone to actually play, but it doesn’t mean that they aren’t being tracked, and you’ll get all of them tomorrow when the servers come back up after the client update. There is still more work to do on this front as well, and the team plans to complete it by the end of the week.
The team feels that they are “in a good place” about people being able to log in, but they’re continuing to monitor the issue. They’re seeing two-three times as much concurrency compared to what they’ve seen before. What was high concurrency before is the “new normal.”
There have been some isolated instances of data getting overwritten closer to the game’s launch, and players affected should get in touch with support so that their case can be looked at individually.
If you want to hear more from Duncan and Neate, you can also check out the first video of this series.