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Sea of Thieves Welcomes 40 Million Players - Celebrating a phenomenal fleet of Xbox and PC pirates

adamsapple

Or is it just one of Phil's balls in my throat?

As I’m sure you can imagine, when it comes to Sea of Thieves my days are full of numbers. Development costs, active servers, days until the next update… Sometimes, though, a truly extraordinary number stands out – a number like 40 million, which I’m incredibly pleased to say is the number of pirates who’ve now set sail in Sea of Thieves!

40 million players across Xbox, Windows 10 and Steam is an amazing milestone to be able to talk about, and of course it wouldn’t have happened without you – our brilliant, positive and welcoming community, who continue to surprise and impress us with your creativity and antics out on the waves.

That said, I also want to take this opportunity to offer heartfelt thanks to the team, who’ve worked so hard to deliver over a hundred free updates since launch and have plenty more excitement and innovation on the horizon. Season 12 is almost here, and the new additions like throwing knives and the Bone Caller are going to transform our sandbox yet again.

I’m also excited about getting to expand our community even further, as we’re just days away from launching on PlayStation®5 and introducing a whole new plethora of pirates to our shared world. The positivity and excitement coming out of our Closed Beta was infectious, and I can’t wait for even more fresh faces to arrive starting next week.
 
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RagnarokIV

Battlebus imprisoning me \m/ >.< \m/
Got about halfway-ish through and forgot about it. Now I can't go back because I forgot what happened and where to go next.

Enjoyed my time with it though.
 

Topher

Identifies as young
Sooner or later, people will finally have to admit that Rare has been the most successful under Microsoft.

Financially, I don't think there is any debate about it. I think a lot of folks want Rare of old, but that ship has sailed

See Ya Reaction GIF by Travis
 

Dr. Claus

Banned
How many of those are one day downloads on game pass that immediately deleted the game? How many are still actively playing across the board?

Sea of Thieves on Steam charts says around 9,000 active daily players on average. Let’s assume that the majority play on game pass and there are 25,000 daily players. Let’s do 4x that for people who play regularly as well. So 100,000 active/semi active users. That would be only 0.25% of the reported overall player base.
 
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Dorfdad

Gold Member
Sooner or later, people will finally have to admit that Rare has been the most successful under Microsoft.
With player numbers sure, but some of the older gamers remember the classic platform games with fondness. They made many great games that represent gaming for us.
 

Banjo64

cumsessed
Good thing for Rare & Xbox is that it’s never on sale for bargain bucket prices (e.g £7.99 PS Essentials). £17.49 is the cheapest price it’s been available for. So any sales (and we know that it did 5m on Steam very quickly) are bringing in good money.

Get it on Switch 2 and I’ll double dip.
 

HeisenbergFX4

Gold Member
Just wait until all those PS players take to the open seas

Tip for you new PS players who have never played, turn off cross play for awhile as you are going to be the "Christmas Noobs" :)
 

Ozriel

M$FT
How many of those are active players and not people who downloaded for a few minutes from GP?

Why does it have to be ‘active players’ for a game that first released in 2017?

How many of those are one day downloads on game pass that immediately deleted the game? How many are still actively playing across the board?

Sea of Thieves on Steam charts says around 9,000 active daily players on average. Let’s assume that the majority play on game pass and there are 25,000 daily players. Let’s do 4x that for people who play regularly as well. So 100,000 active/semi active users. That would be only 0.25% of the reported overall player base.

The desperation 🤣
 
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Three

Gold Member
Why does it have to be ‘active players’ for a game that first released in 2017?
Not to rain on anybody's parade because I'm happy for rare but the fact that it released a long time ago makes cumulative tallies like clicks, views, or plays less impressive not more (it was 2018 btw).
 
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Ozriel

M$FT
The irony from you console warriors.

200.gif

You're the only one console warring in this thread, y'know.

Not to rain on anybody's parade because I'm happy for rare but the fact that it released a long time ago makes cumulative tallies like clicks, views, or plays less impressive not more (it was 2018 btw).

The vast majority of games never ever reach that benchmark even after a decade, and even on subscription services. Death Stranding for example hit 10 million players in 3 years despite being on PC GamePass and PS+.

Sea of thieves was 'over 35 million players' in February 2024. nearly 5 million new players added in two months across Xbox and PC. About as many players WoLong got in a year despite being GP day one and releasing across all platforms aside from the Switch.
 

Pop

Member
That's total players throughout the life of the game

I mean is that impressive sure, but including gamepass numbers is a meh. Im sure millions tried it for a dollar
 

Three

Gold Member
The vast majority of games never ever reach that benchmark even after a decade, and even on subscription services. Death Stranding for example hit 10 million players in 3 years despite being on PC GamePass and PS+.
The vast majority dont absolutely and nobody is taking away from Sea of theives popularity but what you're doing here is completely disingenuous.

The 10M milestone for DS was "hit in 3 years" from release but that milestone was on Nov 2022. It hit PS+ (only extra and premium on June 2022 (a very low subscribers service because it launched that same month) and PC only gamepass August 2022 (before being removed shortly after too) . The time between release into those services and that 10M milestone announcement is no more than 5 months of players accumulating in a low sub count service. so trying to pass it off as if it couldn't reach that milestone in a decade of subscription services with users clicking on it is just wrong. That comparison is simply not valid.

Sea of thieves was 'over 35 million players' in February 2024. nearly 5 million new players added in two months across Xbox and PC. About as many players WoLong got in a year despite being GP day one and releasing across all platforms aside from the Switch.
Wolong isn't a very popular single player game let alone a popular GaaS game. Attacking somebody who asks "but what's it's active users" as if that's not the more important metric to a GaaS game and suggesting it's an old (2018) game as if that makes concentrating on the cumulative tallies more impressive isn't right and I'm sure you know that. If you want to compare to GaaS games that have been out a long time there are plenty out there and you can see the tallies do reach those numbers and more Rainbow Six: Siege 85M (likely 100M now), Warframe, 75M... Being an older game doesn't make a player count tally more impressive it makes it less impressive and what usually matters in a GaaS game is active players now.

SEGAvangelist SEGAvangelist not sure what you're laughing at but if it's related to my analysis regarding death stranding being able to accumulate players over a decade:

Nov 2022: 10M
Dec 2023: 16M

 
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Dr. Claus

Banned
200.gif

You're the only one console warring in this thread, y'know.
Asking a basic question is console warring now? I have no allegiances to any particular plastic box or platform, unlike you.

The vast majority of games never ever reach that benchmark even after a decade, and even on subscription services. Death Stranding for example hit 10 million players in 3 years despite being on PC GamePass and PS+.
Yes, most games never reach that number. However, there is a point to be made on whether those were active users or not. Its why this metric means *absolutely nothing*. I love Final Fantasy XIV and it had reached "25 million users" back in December of 2021. That doesn't mean 25 million active users. That doesn't even mean 1 million active users. Its a meaningless metric primarily used for warriors like yourself to feel good about your favorite plastic box/company.

As for DS, it hit 10 Million in 2022. 5 months earlier was the first time it had hit PS+, but only for Extra and Premium subscribers which was a brand new thing at the time. Numbers for those active groups were *very* low. For Gamepass, it only released on PC in August of that same year. Three months prior to the announcement. Not to mention your attempt to use a very niche Japanese single player game to, what is essentially an MMO-Lite GAAS title which could have been played for years at 1 dollar versus the 3 months of DS? No one is fooled by your attempts here. People aren't as dumb as you desperately wish to think.
 
The vast majority dont absolutely and nobody is taking away from Sea of theives popularity but what you're doing here is completely disingenuous.

The 10M milestone for DS was "hit in 3 years" from release but that milestone was on Nov 2022. It hit PS+ (only extra and premium on June 2022 (a very low subscribers service because it launched that same month) and PC only gamepass August 2022 (before being removed shortly after too) . The time between release into those services and that 10M milestone announcement is no more than 5 months of players accumulating in a low sub count service. so trying to pass it off as if it couldn't reach that milestone in a decade of subscription services with users clicking on it is just wrong. That comparison is simply not valid.


Wolong isn't a very popular single player game let alone a popular GaaS game. Attacking somebody who asks "but what's it's active users" as if that's not the more important metric to a GaaS game and suggesting it's an old (2018) game as if that makes concentrating on the cumulative tallies more impressive isn't right and I'm sure you know that. If you want to compare to GaaS games that have been out a long time there are plenty out there and you can see the tallies do reach those numbers and more Rainbow Six: Siege 85M (likely 100M now), Warframe, 75M... Being an older game doesn't make a player count tally more impressive it makes it less impressive and what usually matters in a GaaS game is active players now.

SEGAvangelist SEGAvangelist not sure what you're laughing at but if it's related to my analysis regarding death stranding being able to accumulate players over a decade:

Nov 2022: 10M
Dec 2023: 16M


I'm laughing at your pathetic desire to downplay this number.
 

UltimaKilo

Gold Member
One of the best multiplayer games for PVP of the last 10 years. Few games offer the fun of sneaking up on people while they’re questing on and island or doing a fort. Tucking on ships, climbing on an enemy vessel that is chasing you with an Athena gunpowder barrel and hearing them all scream “oh shit!” is special.

I’ll fire it up again in the next couple of weeks.
 

Three

Gold Member
I'm laughing at your pathetic desire to downplay this number.
Nobody downplayed the number though. I said I'm happy for rare and that nobody is taking away from its popularity. I only said that Ozriel mentioning the age of the game like that's a bad thing works in its favour rather than against when it comes to tally counts. That's not detrimental to cumulative tallies, it's the complete opposite. Then he completely disingenuously mentioned DS with a tally not even 5 months worth of subs as 3 years even though in a year past that 10M it had gained 6M more. Years absolutely work for these cumulative numbers not against.
 
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