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Sea of Thieves has hit a major milestone with ten million players dipping their toes in the nautical multiplayer adventure since its launch (via Xbox Achievements).
Developer Rare held out on making a video game about swashbuckling sea dogs for ages. Back in the 1990s, the piratical Project Dream was a concept of theirs that turned into Banjo-Kazooie, but there were undercurrents that the company weren’t landlubbers in truth, and kept their eyes on that horizon. Sea of Thieves was announced in 2015, to be released for the Xbox One and PC and published by Microsoft Studios. However, the game hadn’t found its sea legs once it had been ushered out of the door in 2018. “With Sea of Thieves… the main loop of the game becomes stultifying without players working hard to make it not that,” we thought. “The sound and the fury of the waves is lovely, but for Sea of Thieves to be a properly good game it needs to give the players a bit more to work with.”
Rare put the wind in Sea of Thieves' sails with bountiful updates and expansions, and the game became the Xbox One’s most successful original IP of this generation. It got actors Sean Astin to do a silly trailer and Matt Berry to enact a dramatic reading of patch notes, and the ginormous anniversary update brought a whole new quest and PvP mode to the burgeoning multiplayer adventure. Now, the game has exceeded ten million players, and the developer is pleased as punch.
“For everyone at Rare, the Sea of Thieves community represents the very best of what gaming can be,” said executive producer Joe Neate in a post on Xbox Wire. “It’s mind-blowing to think of that many people setting sail on the Sea of Thieves,” added Neate, and expressed that the team is “excited and humbled” by players’ stalwart support since 2018. He also shared what’s to come with the January update—titled “Legends of the Seas”—which will be free to all players. There will be two limited-edition gifts celebrating the ten million players achievement, and the update will shine the spotlight on the community and their stories. “Legends of the Seas” goes live on January 15, and players who log-in to Sea of Thieves between January 15 and 22 will snag a free custom sail and new emote.
Sea of Thieves is out now for PC and Xbox One.
