By Sea of Thieves Community Direct tells all
- by Ben Kerry
Today, Sea Of Thieves developer Rare has hosted its first-ever ‘Community Direct’ livestream, addressing past game updates and what plans the studio has for the future of the title. While specific new updates weren’t really discussed in detail, the team talked about its development process from a high level, in the wake of Everwild‘s recent cancellation.
To cut a long story short, the studio is targeting a number of key areas with future SoT updates. One of those is making sure it has better processes for taking on player feedback, with a broader range of issues being tackled in quicker time. There was a feature tease here too – with new Field of View options seemingly being looked at right now at Rare; a request that hasn’t been tackled since the game’s launch in 2018.
Alongside this, the team also wants its seasonal updates to be more coherent, and to be underpinned by a deeper narrative. Rare says that in the past, it’s chased certain new features or requests for each new season, subsequently abandoning past features that weren’t fully built out. It’s now restructuring its live service teams to allow developers to continue working on long-term features rather than everyone pivoting to what’s new.
There will still be a ‘Seasons’ team though, with both Season 17 and 18 mentioned here in this community update. It’s sounding a lot like Season 17 will be a big reset for Sea of Thieves, while Rare has begun teasing an expanded ‘Devil’s Roar’ location with Season 18. Beyond that, the Xbox developer says that it still has a multi-year plan for its pirate adventure, which is good news for fans who may have been worried about the title following recent layoffs at the studio.
Rare closed out its Community Direct by announcing that paid custom servers are coming to the game in early 2026 – and we’ve thrown the full livestream down below if you’d like a bit more detail on the future of Sea of Thieves. It looks like Rare’s big old pirate adventure isn’t going anywhere yet!
How do you feel about the future of Rare and Sea of Thieves? Talk to us about it all down below.
Ben is a News Writer at Pure Xbox, and is a fan of action, racing and straight-up shootin’ in any Xbox game he can get his hands on. When he’s not clutching an Xbox controller like his life depends on it, Ben spends his time listening to music that’s far too old for him, watching football on the telly and probably eating somewhere.