About

Sea of Thieves is a co-operative online multiplayer adventure game in which players explore an open world on a pirate ship and ether solo or with friends complete quests. Players can interact with other players on the server in combat.

History

Rare began developing Sea of Thieves in 2014.^[1] The game was announced at E3 2015, with gameplay footage shown at E3 the following year. A demo was available at E3 the following year, and was streamed by Polygon (shown below, left). The stream led to a memorable McElroy Brothers moment when Justin McElroy trolled other players by abusing a feature which allows players to display their map to others (shown below, right).

The game was intended for release in 2017 but was released to March 20th, 2018 and is available for play on Windows and Xbox One.

Reception

The game received mixed reviews from critics. The game received a score of 69/100 on Metacritic.^[2] Critics were not impressed with the game's lack of story and long breaks between player versus player (PvP) interactions. Additionally, they bemoaned the game's lack of variety in maps and quests. The game was awarded Giant Bomb's Most Disappointing Game of 2018.^[3]

Online Presence

The game has a strong online presence, with over 108,000 Facebook likes^[4] and a subreddit with over 133,000 subscribers.^[5] The game also saw a surge in popularity in January of 2019 after developers addressed issues that were problematic at launch and notable Twitch streamers began playing the game again.^[6] One of the most popular streamers was Summit1g, who streamed the game and expressed frustrations with the lack of PvP interactions he was having.^[7] Developers have also given weekly updates on their tweaks in the game (example shown below).

Search Interest

External References