Sea Of Thieves hits Steam's shores next month
Ship shape
It's been a long, arduous voyage through the storms of "being a Windows Store exclusive", but finally, Sea Of Thieves is making landfall on Steam's shores. Rare's lovely little piracy sandbox will drop anchor on June 3rd, letting former Windows sailors carry their progress over to the new vessel with full cross-play between Steam, Windows and Xbox. With two years of updates under its belt, it'll hopefully launch in a more ship-shape state that its maiden voyage way back when.
Two months after announcing the voyage, Sea Of Thieves is welcoming Steam's scoundrels to the seven seas with a new trailer - backed by what I'm generously starting to call "videogame trailer music". You know the kind I mean.
Sea Of Thieves, if you're unfamiliar, is a proper brilliant little ocean sandbox. It's not the deepest (hah!) game out there, but it's a wonderful romp with the right friends - a luscious ocean packed with eerie wrecks, swashbuckling felines, and the occasional flying galleon. Even if you're not up for high sailing on the seven seas, there are enough gorgeous island vistas out there to prop up a whole community of nautical photographers.
It's also got the best deep blue I've seen in a game to date, making for some remarkably chill voyages - assuming your fellow pirates play nice. They will not, in fact, play nice.
In a quick little FAQ put together by the devs, it appears you'll still be required to use a Windows Live account to play Sea Of Thieves. That does mean any progress made on the Windows Store version will carry over (though you'll still be required to buy the Steam version), and there'll be full crossplay between Steam, Windows and Xbox players.
But my experience of Windows accounts in Steam games, namely Halo: The Master Chief Collection, has been one of frustrating account-juggling and baffling inconsistencies between Steam and Windows. Naturally, YMMV.
But it's a small frustration to pay for some of the best highs seas antics you can find on PC. Sea Of Thieves launches on Steam on July 3rd for £35/€40/$40.