Rare’s New Game Off to Rocky Start
Although it went through lots of pre-release testing, Sea of Thieves is off to a rocky start. Many players found themselves unable to connect at launch, and at one point Rare even temporarily suspended new players from entering the game.
Despite these issues, many people are still playing.
Rare spoke about the server issues in a 10-minute video, claiming that the number of players at launch is “between three and four times” of the game’s biggest beta test.
“I think at one point our service engineers told me we had 5,000 people coming in per minute,” said studio head Craig Duncan. “The other thing is just on a general level of scale, we’ve actually seen more than a million unique users in a 48-hour period.”
Rare has implemented many server-side fixes and will continue down this path. The developers provide some tips to help minimize problems during peak hours, including solo players joining full crews. They also advise against quitting and rejoining games if your quest rewards or achievements aren’t showing up.
“We do appreciate all the patience, we do appreciate the support,” Duncan said. “Believe me, it is as frustrating for us as it is for anyone that’s experiencing an issue. We wanna get to an end state where everyone has a good time all the time every time they play.”
In an interview about the game’s direction, Duncan touched on the game’s new direction for the company.
“Rare games before would always be like they’d have a story and they’d have fun worlds, but you were kind of playing in our playground. It was a game that [creative director] Gregg [Mayles] and our design team created and any humour, any story was Rare’s story that you were just happening to be in. Whereas, with Sea of Thieves, we’ve taken a much more holistic approach, which Joe Neate, our producer, describes as a bit more improv comedy.”
Sea of Thieves is available for Xbox One and Microsoft Windows.