Today Rare has revealed their plans for Sea of Thieves in 2021. And it seems they’ve learned from the best in the business, Fortnite, on how to maintain a Game as a Service in the long run. Sea of Thieves is receiving seasons, Battle Passes and a different update schedule starting this January. Meanwhile, it seems like Arena didn’t set the world on fire. Everything is explained in the Sea of Thieves News update below. Prefer reading? Our summary can be found below the video.
Seasons and Battle Passes
Sea of Thieves is still very much alive. 11 million people played Sea of Thieves in 2020. Over a million people bought the game on Steam and 2020 has been the biggest year for Sea of Thieves yet. 2019 was bigger than 2018 and 2020 has been bigger than 2019.
It seems Rare believes they have a keeper with Sea of Thieves and thus they are more and more transitioning to a live service game approach. (If this wasn’t the case already). Starting in January, every three months a new Season will be launched accompanying a feature update. Players will be able to progress within a season, making shorter playing sessions more viable, and can win awards and cosmetics by playing.
Meanwhile they are also adding a Battle Pass system called the Plunder Pass.
No more feature updates for Arena
In the Sea of Thieves News video Joe Neate, executive producer at Rare, has revealed 97 percent of all playtime is happening in the Adventure Mode. This means only three percent of all playtime is in Arena. Rare has taken the decision to keep Arena around for people who like it, but to stop development of new features to this mode.
New update schedule
In 2020, Sea of Thieves received an update every month. Some were bigger than others, but most of the months Rare added new features on a monthly basis. This will change. Major feature updates will now arrive every season, so every three months. Pirate Emporium updates, performance patches and bug fixes will obviously still happen on a regular basis.
