Sea of Thieves first set sail in March 2018, and within two years it had amassed over 15 million players. Rare and Microsoft’s open-world game was an instant commercial success, and its continued popularity shows there’s a healthy appetite for shared adventure pirate games.
In Sea of Thieves, players raise sails and take to the high seas, collaborating or competing to complete quests across seasonal events. From sea monsters to ghost ships, Rare has developed and fine-tuned downloadable content to build a loyal fanbase. It looks like the studio is on track to support the game for at least ten years.
Like many multiplayer games, Sea of Thieves’ audience grew during the COVID-19 lockdowns of 2020 and 2021, and it consistently makes Steam’s top 100. The majority of its audience comes from the United States and Germany, with players keen to share their content online. Rare cultivated a game that’s almost as good to watch as to play. In spring 2021, Twitch reported that 4.52 million hours of Sea of Thieves gameplay had been viewed.
Is Sea of Thieves splitscreen?
Published by Microsoft Studios, Sea of Thieves is a flagship game for its cross-platform ambitions. Players can interact seamlessly across Xbox and PC.
But while multiplayer is a huge part of the Sea of Thieves experience, friends can only join each other through online co-op. Neither the PC nor Xbox versions of the game support split-screen multiplayer. So if you want a pirate mate to join your crew, you’ll need to make sure you both own a copy.
