After several years in development, the long-awaited Sea of Thieves first released last year on Xbox One and PC, and while it was met with a bit of a mixed reception, in the long run the game has maintained a steady and passionate audience after launch. After the release of two major expansion last year, Rare has assured that more is on the way for the game to quell fears that the game may die down any time soon.
In a series of tweets from Rare studio head Craig Duncan, he shared a bit more on the studio’s future plans with Sea of Thieves as the game nears one year since its release, specifically to “address a few concerns” that the game’s larger audience has had about upcoming content.
Notably, Duncan assured that the player population for Sea of Thieves since launch has been “super healthy on both PC and Xbox,” though without giving specific numbers or stats as far as the game’s active users/concurrent players to date. However, mainly Duncan seems to have wanted to assure that there is still a wide audience for Sea of Thieves across Xbox One and PC at the moment and for the foreseeable future.
Likewise, Duncan also shared that the studio has no intention of removing the crossplay features between the Xbox One and PC versions of the title, after explaining that an upcoming update for Sea of Thieves will provide console players with the ability to “opt out of crossplay if they choose.” Duncan noted that while he expects most players to continue utilizing the ability to play games together between both platforms, he felt that giving console players the ability to opt out of the experience was an “important option to add with The Arena coming,” a competitive PvP mode that, naturally, may give PC players a bit of an advantage over console players.
That being said, Duncan’s statements at least give encourage that while some of the buzz around Sea of Thieves has notably died down a bit from when the game first released last March, Rare is only continuing to support players’ adventures across the high seas for the coming future.
Sea of Thieves is available now on Xbox One and PC.
Wanted to address a few concerns we see some folks have about our future #SeaOfThieves plans. Rest assured our goals are ALWAYS to do the right thing by our players and community; there broadly seems to be 4 key points that needed clarity:
— Craig Duncan (@Gamerboss) February 3, 2019
1/ We aren’t removing crossplay; we are adding an option for console players using controller to opt out of crossplay if they choose. We expect most players, especially in Adventure, to still play using crossplay, but this is important option to add with The Arena coming
— Craig Duncan (@Gamerboss) February 3, 2019
2/ The crossplay option is not coming in the February update, see Joe’s last dev update for more info, the team is working now on implementation of the option settings & our goal is to have this in & tested prior to The Arena
— Craig Duncan (@Gamerboss) February 3, 2019
3/ Servers will still have the same density they do today as we spin up Azure servers as players join & backfill new crews into live servers. Our server density is architected to not be affected by the size of our player pop, but to vary the player encounter frequency & stories
— Craig Duncan (@Gamerboss) February 3, 2019
4/ Our player population is super healthy on both PC and Xbox & has been since launch. While we don’t tweet usage data reactively, we will figure out how we share more stats on this soon to give context why players don’t need to worry about our live player or platform populations
— Craig Duncan (@Gamerboss) February 3, 2019
As I said at the top, we have always strived for everyone to enjoy #SeaOfThieves whether you are a brand-new player or someone that has been with us from the start, we prioritise all players & all platforms together – thanks!
— Craig Duncan (@Gamerboss) February 3, 2019
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