Rare Has Plotted Out the Next Five Years of Sea of Thieves

Rare and Microsoft are celebrating the fifth anniversary of Sea of Thieves, but the developers are also looking out toward the horizon for the next five years of the live service pirate adventure.

In an article on Xbox Wire, Xbox revealed that the Sea of Thieves team at Rare recently sat down to plot out the next five years of the game.

“I think 10 years of Sea of Thieves will feel like a long time – but also, we’ll blink and be there,” creative director Mike Chapman said. “And I still think we’ll have unfinished business when we get to that point.”

The Sea of Thieves team is apparently discussing ideas for smuggling mechanics, rewards for protecting other players from griefers, and a mechanic for “painting” screenshots. The development team’s mantra is “Players Creating Stories Together”, and this wide vision has the team feeling like they’ll never run out of ideas, as long as players are there to experience them.

There are some other interesting stories in Xbox Wire’s celebration of Sea of Thieves. The developers revealed that the original pitch for Sea of Thieves starred secret agents instead of pirates, and that they “ripped up our roadmap” after launch and changed the approach to the game’s content updates.

Sea of Thieves has seen tons of content updates since its initial launch in 2018. From collaborations with franchises like Pirates of the Carribean and Borderlands, to last year’s randomized three-part quest, there have been plenty of seafaring adventures for players to sink their teeth into.

We re-reviewed Sea of Thieves in 2020, calling it “a pirate fantasy sandbox with an enormous amount of things to do, made unpredictable and exciting by the addition of other players.” The game also made our list of the ten best co-op games.

Logan Plant is a freelance writer for IGN covering video game and entertainment news. He has over six years of experience in the gaming industry with bylines at IGN, Nintendo Wire, Switch Player Magazine, and Lifewire. Find him on Twitter @LoganJPlant.