When Adventure Meets Unforgivable Betrayal
When I first discovered Arc Raiders, I wasn’t really surprised by the sneaky side of its PvE encounters. If I’m honest, while Embark Studios’ title can certainly be frustrating when luck turns against you, it’s nowhere near as demoralizing as Rare’s 2018 pirate sandbox. Sea of Thieves has given me some of my best moments online—and most of my worst.
Lately, you don’t hear as much buzz about Sea of Thieves, even though it keeps getting updated. But setting sail into its world is still a guarantee of surprises (not all of them pleasant). The game is about to celebrate eight years since its launch, and it still stands out from the online crowd.
The Game Where Pirates Are Truly Pirates
Sea of Thieves leans hard on teamwork and crew communication. Whether you’re weighing anchor, raising and trimming the sails, navigating, fixing your battered hull, fighting off enemies (or each other), or just after the ever-glorious treasure, you’re going to be interacting—a lot. Don’t be fooled by its colorful, inviting art style. Under the cheery exterior, this is one of the most merciless games of the last decade. In a sense, that’s only fitting: Rare’s entire vision is for players to be as crafty and mischievous as actual pirates!
Anyone who’s tried the game (it’s right there in Xbox Game Pass) knows the score: a reward only counts once it’s been sold. The difference from Arc Raiders couldn’t be starker. In Arc Raiders, a successful extraction secures your hard-earned loot; in Sea of Thieves, you’re forced back onto the open ocean, searching for an outpost to cash in—treasure in hand, nerves on edge.
The Art of the Double-Cross
Here’s the real kicker: the most trouble often starts on your way back. That’s when things get dicey, whether it’s other players eyeing what you’ve stashed in your hold (hello, PvP!) or an unexpected sea monster lurking beneath the waves (classic PvE surprise). Any fleeting alliances can evaporate as fast as seawater on sand. Hours’ worth of effort can literally go up in smoke—or, more likely, sink without trace. And let’s face it: a crew with empty holds sailing from an outpost has way less at stake than a ship loaded with treasure headed home. It’s an inherent imbalance. Rare has always been clear: the core of Sea of Thieves isn’t winning, it’s simply playing. Fair or unfair, that’s just part of the game.
With only sixteen players per server, the game’s a bit like a social experiment, watching how far pirates will go for gold—as if observing rats in a maze. Will they cooperate? Will chaos break out? Or, most likely, will pirates work together and then stab each other in the back the second it counts? The game embraces all sorts of mischief. My most painful memory? Assaulting a skeleton fort, spending an hour fighting off endless waves of creatures and a seriously stubborn boss alongside another crew—only for them to sink my ship and send me to the darkness as soon as the key to Ali Baba’s cave dropped to the ground.
That’s the game, my dear Lucette.
Nefarious Ingenuity (and an Odd Sense of Justice)
Often, it’s the most calculating players who walk away with the loot—and the bragging rights. Ruthless tactics aren’t just permitted, they’re absolutely baked into the game’s design. I’ve seen players quietly wait in outposts, setting an ambush for pirates returning with their hard-fought riches. The worst? Ever since the game introduced the ability to disguise yourself as a barrel (thanks, emotes!), this sneak attack works better than ever.
In Sea of Thieves, everything’s an excuse to test someone’s limits. These days, though, Rare has watered down its Grog a bit. With the release on PS5, players worried about evil encounters can opt for “Safer Seas” mode—pure PvE, with other players locked out, although there’s less loot on offer. In a way, this might feel like Rare’s betraying the game’s founding principle. Still, after enough players were burned one too many times, the balance finally tipped. You could say they nudged Rare into creating an ‘easy’ mode… by removing the worst of human nature (that is, other players) from certain servers. Got to admit, that took some imagination!
