Rare’s live-service pirate gameSea of Thieveshas enjoyed persistent popularity since its launch in 2018. This is largely thanks to Rare’s continued support of the game, releasing new content forSea of Thievesregularly in the form of major updates, balance changes, quality of life improvements, and numerous cosmetic items for players to add to their collections. A recent change saw Rare tweak the number of ships and players in any givenSea of Thievesserver, but it is already changing things up again.
With the January update forSea of Thieves, Rare made it so that all servers would support six crews at a time with a limit of 16 players. However, Rare has now decided to dial things back a bit, reducing the number of ships inSea of Thievesserversfrom six to five.Sea of Thievesservers will still have a cap of 16 players, but there will be fewer ships sailing the open seas. Rare hopes that this change will result in moreSea of Thievesship size variety and will improve the game’s matchmaking performance.
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The reaction to this change has been mixed. Some members of theSea of Thievescommunity are welcoming the change as it means there’s less of a chance they’ll get attacked by enemy players. Others are asking Rare to actually increase the number of ships present inSea of Thievesas they enjoy the PvP element of the game and find getting into fights with otherpirate crewsto be exciting.
WithSea of Thievesbeing a live-service game, it’s always possible that there will be even more changes to the number of ships and players for each server. However, it seems unlikely that Rare will ever increase the number of ships or players in a server by too much. After all,Sea of Thievesis an Xbox One game just as much as it’s a PC and Xbox Series X game, meaning that its potential player count is likely being held back at least somewhat by older hardware.
Regardless, fans should still be able to expect plenty ofSea of Thievesupdates in the months ahead, as the game remains quite popular. Some of these may even be rather substantial ones, like theSea of ThievesPirates of the Caribbeanupdatethat added story content based on Disney’s pirate-themed movie franchise, but most of it will be smaller in scale.
Sea of Thievessupport may continue for even longer than one would have guessed, as Rare’s next game,Everwildfor Xbox Series X, is reportedly running into some development headaches.
Sea of Thievesis out now for PC, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X.
