Sea of Thieves Devs Share Updates That Address Launch Issues and Improvements

Sea of Thieves released this week and with it was love, joy, and chaos for some players due to the servers being overloaded and also how many have felt that the game so far lacks content.

Sea of Thieves executive producer, Jon Neate, shares a letter to their players sharing that they are aware of the issues, updates, and what is going to be the future of Sea of Thieves to stay tuned for. Check out the full letter and updates below.

Hi we wanted to share an update with all our players about the top issues we’ve been seeing since we launched Sea of Thieves on March 20th.

In that time, an unprecedented number of people have been playing the game. We have seen 3-4 times more concurrent players than we saw during any Scale Test or Beta session. So far, more than one million unique players have set sail in Sea of Thieves.

This has led to some scale-related issues that we are working hard across the team to resolve. We are aware that temporarily not being able to access the game, or seeing any of the problems listed below, can cause immense frustration. Please rest assured the issues below are our top priorities and we are doing everything we can to address them.

For a more in-depth explanation, Rare shares a Developer Update video, check it out below.

Jon and the rest of the Rare Games Dev team also shared a summary of main issues that were brought to their attention, along with their current status.

Last Updated: March 22nd, 2pm GMT

1. Players having difficulty getting into the game at peak times

  • During peak times (9am–2pm GMT/5pm–10pm EDT/2pm–7pm PDT) we are seeing a very high volume of players, which is leading to strain on our server matchmaking services.
    Status: Ongoing work to improve. On Wednesday night we again reached a higher CCU than we have seen so far, thanks to some improvements made in our services. Work continues to prepare for peak time Thursday, and then through to Friday and the weekend when we expect the highest player numbers yet. As the numbers continue to grow, we will work to maintain the experience for everyone. There might be cases where we need to temporarily halt incoming players to maintain the quality of the experience for people already in and playing. If we need to do this, we will message out on our social channels. We ask that everyone bears with us whilst we work with the extremely high player numbers we are seeing.Advice: Try matchmaking into a crew that is already out on an adventure, as you will join an in-progress session rather than going through the server matchmaking flow.2. Player rewards being delayed
  • Due to the volume of players, our services that award players gold and reputation when cashing in rewards can be delayed. Players should expect to see these rewards eventually come through, as they are queued up in our message service.
    Status: Ongoing work to improve. During the maintenance window this morning we made some improvements for peak time tonight, and will continue to make improvements as we head towards the weekend. We have also identified some client-side fixes that require a game patch to update, which is due early next week. Right now this is our key priority from an in-game experience perspective, and all efforts across the team are focused on addressing this ASAP. It is a direct result of the scale we are seeing, so please bear with us. We are also investigating reports of some players still not receiving rewards, even after a delay. Investigations are underway on this as a high priority.Advice: Don’t quit and restart to try to resolve the issue during peak times. If you continue playing, rewards should flow through eventually.3. Achievements being delayed
  • We have had to temporarily disable achievements being awarded to allow our services to cope with the scale of the messages flowing through them. We are storing all awarded achievements, and they will be awarded to players once we are through this weekend and we release the first game patch.
    Status: Believed fixed for next game patch (ETA: early next week).4. Temporarily missing items
  • We have seen reports of players loading into the game and not having items/weapons.
    Status: Believed fixed for next game patch (ETA: early next week).5. Reported performance issues on Xbox One X
  • We have seen some performance issues reported when playing Sea of Thieves on Xbox One X.
    Status: Believed fixed for next game patch (ETA: early next week).6. Players not receiving entitlements such as the Black Dog Pack
  • Due to the huge number of players redeeming their entitlements we saw some instability occurring in the title. We have temporarily disabled this and a fix is in place for the first patch update, likely to arrive early next week.
    Status: Believed fixed for next game patch (ETA: early next week).


    We also have some upcoming maintenance windows:

  • Saturday March 24th, 9am–2pm GMT
  • Tuesday March 27th, 9am–2pm GMT
    Thanks,– Joe Neate, Executive Producer

The Devs look like they are paying close attention to their new community’s response on their title and are making strides to iron out some launch week issues. This is a great first step but with my experience with Sea of Thieves I was able to play Sea of Thieves and so far let’s say a lot is needed as far as content beyond the issues addressed. The title is mostly said to be enjoyed with but will keep an open mind for what’s to come in the future with Sea of Thieves.