Sea of Thieves

Sea of Thieves is a 2018 action-adventure game developed by Rare and published by Xbox Game Studios. The player assumes the role of a pirate who completes voyages from different trading companies. The multiplayer game sees players explore an open world via a pirate ship from a first-person perspective. Players may encounter each other during their adventures, sometimes forming alliances, and sometimes going head-to-head.

The concept of Sea of Thieves was conceived in 2014. Rare was inspired by players of PC games such as Eve Online (2003), DayZ (2018), and Rust (2018), who used the game tools to create their own stories. Rare explored different settings, such as vampires and dinosaurs, before settling on a pirate theme inspired by the Pirates of the Caribbean films and The Goonies (1985). The game features a progression system that only unlocks cosmetic items as the development team wanted to encourage both casual and experienced players to play together. Rare departed from its reputation for secrecy during Sea of Thieves's development, inviting fans to test early builds.

Sea of Thieves was released in March 2018 for Windows and Xbox One; it was one of the earliest first-party games released for Xbox Game Pass subscribers. It received mixed reviews; critics praised the ship combat, multiplayer, visuals, and physics, but criticized the progression, gameplay, and lack of content. Rare envisioned Sea of Thieves as a "game as a service" and has released numerous content updates after the initial release, which improved its reception. Sea of Thieves was a commercial success and became Microsoft's most successful original intellectual property of the eighth generation, attracting more than 40 million players by April 2024. A native Xbox Series X/S version of the game was released on March 13, 2024, and the game was released for the PlayStation 5 on April 30, 2024, making it Rare's first game to be released on a PlayStation console. Sea of Thieves was the final Rare title to be directed by veteran designer Gregg Mayles, before he departed the company in 2025.

Sea of Thieves is a first-person perspective action-adventure game. At the beginning of the game, the player selects their procedurally generated player avatar and ventures out onto the ocean, completing voyages and quests for the various trading companies in-game. Completion of these voyages will reward the player with treasure, which can then be sold to trading company representatives at outposts to gain reputation. The game is set in a shared world, which means groups of players will encounter each other throughout their adventures, often engaging in naval battles and trying to steal treasure from each other.

Solo and duo players sail around in a nimble sloop while players playing in a group control a larger three-person brigantine or a four-person galleon cooperatively by assuming different roles, such as steering the ship, manning the cannons, navigating, boarding enemy ships, and scouting from the crow's nest. Players can save the loadout of the ship and customize the ship's hull, figurehead, sails and captain's quarters, as well as name their ship once they have sufficient gold to purchase one. Occasionally players may encounter hostile players who may attack them with cannonballs or board their ship. If areas under the deck take damage, water will flow in through holes and cause the ship to gradually fill with water. Players can patch up these holes with planks of wood and bail out water using buckets.

Alliances can be formed with other player crews. When a treasure item is sold by a member of an alliance, all other members receive gold and reputation points at half of the item's normal value. Ships in an alliance fly the same flag and are visible on the map tables on other ships in the alliance. Forming an alliance does not prevent players from attacking each other. If a player dies, there is a limited window of time during which they are able to be revived by crewmates or allied player crews. If they are not revived in time, they are sent to a ghost ship known as the Ferry of the Damned where they wait until they can respawn on their crew's ship. A competitive multiplayer mode named "Arena" was introduced in the Anniversary update, allowing up to six teams of players to compete against each other by gathering silver in smaller maps. Due to low player participation, this game mode was subsequently removed in a later update. "Arena" was replaced with a new multiplayer PvP mode called "Hourglass" in Season 9. A player-versus-environment mode named "Safer Seas" was introduced in December 2023.

Players can complete voyages offered by the game's three main trading companies: Gold Hoarders, Order of Souls, and the Merchant Alliance. In the quests offered by Gold Hoarders, players are given a treasure map or a riddle to locate a treasure chest. The voyages offered by the Order of Souls are combat challenges, in which players travel to islands specified by the quest to defeat waves of skeletons. The Merchant Alliance's missions require players to deliver animals or cargo to certain vendors within a limited time. Three smaller factions also exist. One of them, the Reaper's Bones, does not offer quests. The Reaper's Bones will pay for all kinds of treasures, and players can also give them special cursed treasures or emissary flags stolen from other ships. Players must deliver treasure to representatives of the quest-giving faction, though the player holding the chest is defenseless and it may be taken from them by other players. Selling the treasure earns players gold, which can be used to purchase cosmetic items. Pets, emotes, and further cosmetic items can also be purchased using real-world currency by accessing the Pirate Emporium store.

Doubloons, earned through completing commendations from the Bilge Rats, the fourth trading company that distributes quests, challenges, and cosmetics added to the game via post-launch updates, can be traded for cosmetics, gold, or reputation to the other factions. The Anniversary update added Tall Tales, which are a series of structured narrative missions. Selling treasures to any of the three main trading companies, as well as Reaper's Bones or Athena's Fortune, earns the player reputation points, which unlock more complicated quests from each faction and additional purchasable cosmetics. When players reach rank 50 with any three of the six trading companies, they will earn the title of "pirate legend", which grants players new cosmetic items and access to a pirate hideout, the Tavern of Legends, as well as a special trading company called Athena's Fortune.