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Sea Of Thieves devs lay out plans to keelhaul problems

What shall we do with a drunken server?

When Sea Of Thieves went to sail out of the harbour and launch on Tuesday, it was quickly boarded by far more many players than anticipated and the game's servers sunk to the briny depths of Davy Jones' cyberlocker. Deveelopers Rare even temporarily stopped new players from joining the multiplayer sandbox pirate game. While things are a bit more shipshape now, it's not without problems so Rare last night issued a developer update detailing known issues and their plans for fixing 'em.

Rare laid out four main problems with the Windows 10 version, which I'll summarise here.

1. Players having difficulty getting into the game at peak times
Oh god they're trying to fix it. For now, "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
They're trying to fix it but, for now, just wait rather than restart.

3. Achievements being delayed
This should be fixed in the next patch, due out "early next week".

4. Temporarily missing items
Should also be fixed in that patch.

They also detail a fifth problem involving something named the 'Xbox One X', but I know a made-up name when I see one. Nice try, Rare! I won't fall for your 'X marks the spot' pirate japery.

Rare are also planning server maintenance from 9am to noon GMT on Thursday, Saturday, and Tuesday, and oh look - today's maintenance has just been extended by one hour, to 1pm. Sorry, lunchtime buccaneers.

Oh, what's the game actually like? Our Alec and Fraser Brown have both written about some of their experiences these past few days, which I'll broadly summarise "It could be so much fun with the right players, though the wrong players also kinda ruin it." So it's promising but we'll need to see how the playerbase develops and the game matures.

Back over to two fellas standing in front of a whiteboard:

Cover image for YouTube video

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In this article

Sea of Thieves

Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, PC

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About the Author
Alice O'Connor avatar

Alice O'Connor

Associate Editor

Alice has been playing video games since SkiFree and writing about them since 2009, with nine years at RPS. She enjoys immersive sims, roguelikelikes, chunky revolvers, weird little spooky indies, mods, walking simulators, and finding joy in details. Alice lives, swims, and cycles in Scotland.

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