Rare has announced a slight delay to the start of Sea of Thieves season 7 to ensure quality and avoid crunch.
The announcement was made in a blog post (opens in new tab) on the official Sea of Thieves website. In the post, executive producer Joe Neate explains that the ambitious nature of the update in season 7 means that “there is a lot of hidden work to be done in the background” and that the “vast range of new stats to track” has “required a complex partnership across our Game, UI and Services teams to bring it to life.”
“As we started getting closer to the originally stated release date,” Neate writes in the post, “it became apparent that things were coming in hotter than we liked and there was a real risk of not delivering to the quality and polish we expect, as well as putting undue pressure across the team to get it all over the line.” As a result, the season's release is being pushed back to August 4.
The original launch date for season 7 was July 21 so pushing it to August 4 really is only a matter of a couple of weeks more to wait. However, Neate does acknowledge in the post that season 6 “has been a looooong one” given it started back in March of this year.
“We understand this will be disappointing for those of you who are eagerly awaiting this update,” he writes, “and we appreciate your patience with this change.”
Neate closes out the post by saying that developing a live service game like Sea of Thieves is “still a journey where we learn new things every day”, adding “we believe the decision to shift this release is absolutely the right one to deliver the best experience for you all, while ensuring we continue to operate with a healthy and sustainable approach.”
What will season 7 bring?
When it arrives, Sea of Thieves season 7 is set to introduce some pretty big new features to the game that were previously toe-tappingly teased (opens in new tab) during the Xbox and Bethesda showcase back in June.
The headline feature is ‘Captaincy’, which, as the name suggests, will allow you to become a fully-fledged captain of your own ship. This means buying the vessel, naming it and customizing it to suit your tastes. It’s the first instance of any kind of persistent ship-ownership system in the game.
August and season 7 will also bring the game’s next story-driven Adventure, A Hunter’s Cry, on August 18. This will be the game’s sixth Adventure but there’s not been much revealed about it yet – more details are to be expected a little closer to the time.
Sea of Thieves can be played on Xbox One, Xbox Series X, Xbox Series S and PC players. The game is also available on Xbox Game Pass.
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