Rare’s Sea of Thieves has been out for less than 10 days and despite numerous issues, it’s achieved some very significant milestones. The developer announced that its shared world pirate adventure is Microsoft’s fastest-selling new IP this generation. It’s also reached more than 2 million players since launch after Rare recently announced one million players in the first 48 hours.
Thanks to Sea of Thieves being available on Xbox Game Pass, which costs $9.99 per month with a two week free trial for those who’ve never tried it, the service is very likely to have contributed to the total.
That being said, Rare did state in message thanking fans that, “More than half of a million new Xbox Live friendships have been forged to date and over 400,000 players have joined an Xbox Club to find pirates to share stories with.” So those who signed up to play are still playing and that’s usually a good thing (more for the long-term than short-term but still).
Regarding the recent issues, Rare said that, “We know the response has led to some scale challenges and exposed some bugs we have addressed and will continue to address. Please know that the team at Rare is working hard to tackle any player-impacting issues and this is our number one priority.”
The developer has been fairly receptive to community feedback as well. After proposing a death tax that would subtract gold from players’ corpses, Rare backed down following negative responses. It’s also looking into the issue of spawns and player griefing. What are your thoughts on Sea of Thieves? Let us know in the comments.