The eagerly awaited Season 18 of Sea of Thieves has been postponed until December, and understandably, players are not pleased with this news. Production director Drew Stevens revealed in a video update that “things aren’t going to plan” with the upcoming season. Consequently, it will now be included in December’s update for the game, which currently lacks a definitive release date. While specific details were sparse, Stevens mentioned, “the team is behind where we needed to be at this point in the production cycle.” Additionally, after gathering player feedback and conducting internal tests, he noted, “it’s clear that we’re currently not on track to deliver an update that’s up to the quality standards we aim for.”
Players have expressed their frustration, especially following recent events within Xbox, which saw the cancellation of Everwild and layoffs affecting developers at Rare. The impact on the Sea of Thieves team remains uncertain, but it’s known that the Everwild project was shut down completely.
Many fans took to Reddit to share their thoughts. One top comment, garnering almost 250 upvotes, read: “Quite remarkable that switching to a mildly different approach to content release and some reskinned Merchant voyages for this season seems to have completely obliterated the release schedule; Rare never fails to impress.” Another user commented, “Rare is one of the only developers that manages to only do reskinned content and still fail to deliver it on time. Truly impressive work,” accumulating nearly 100 upvotes.
“What a joy that Rare started drip-feeding the most threadbare updates ever just to still manage to mess things up,” stated another popular comment. While it may not be entirely fair to criticize the timely arrival of previous seasonal updates, one comment humorously noted, “Seasons may be delayed, but these ‘season delayed’ drops are always on time.”
It’s evident that the Sea of Thieves community’s discontent stems not just from the season’s delay but also from concerns over a lack of variety in content. There hasn’t been a major addition akin to the Pirate’s Life expansion featuring Jack Sparrow since its launch in 2021. However, it’s worth recognizing that Sea of Thieves remains a remarkable interactive pirate sandbox that has seen significant positive transformations since its debut.
In the meantime, for those seeking high-quality gaming experiences, here are some of the best Xbox Series X titles you should try out right now.