Sea of Thieves is full of jerk players and giant sharks, but the game has never felt all that dangerous. The latest update, Cursed Sails, mostly corrects that. The addition of terrifying skeleton threats, battles packed with cursed cannonballs, and a brand new player ship brings a welcome sense of urgency to a game…

Old school Nintendo fans dealt with tons of challenging games, but Battletoads was one of the toughest. The third level contains the dreaded “turbo tunnel,” a long hoverbike gauntlet that wrecked careless players and grizzled experts alike. Yesterday, a speedrunner not only completed it without losing a single life,…

Sea of Thieves is slowly expanding with new monsters and new events aiming to bring excitement and color to a game derided for repetitive content. A new event involving exploring and hunting down hidden thrones throughout the world shows one way the controversial pirate game could build a community.

At Microsoft’s E3 press conference on Sunday, Sea of Thieves studio Rare showed off some of the latest DLC coming to its piratey Xbox One/PC game. Later at the show, we talked with the game’s executive producer about how the studio plans to keep that pace up over the months to come.

Sea of Thieves only has a few things for players to do, and that lack of variety has been the Xbox One and PC game’s biggest weakness. A new event, The Hungering Deep, tries to break up the grinding with a quest that brings players together to hunt a massive shark. The quest itself is a little basic, but the final…

Sea of Thieves is adding some welcome features that will keep crews together and help them on their plunder-filled quests. The pirate game now allows players to make their crews private and sail even the biggest ships with only a few hands on deck.

This weekend, I sat down to play Sea of Thieves. As I sailed on my lonesome, passing time until my friends could log on, I returned to port and ran into another group of players. This type of encounter usually leads to disaster, but I was instead treated to a surprise: I had come face to face with a Pirate Legend.

Finding a single treasure chest in the Xbox One pirate game Sea of Thieves can involve up to 30 minutes of sailing and riddle-solving. Sail longer, and players can stack their ship with loot. Some intrepid pirate crews are doing that, waging a treasure “arms” race as they cover their decks with hundreds of chests to…

Sea of Thieves released one month ago, offering a massive ocean playground for cool player stories along with a frustrating lack of activities and grindy progression. Developer Rare has outlined new content plans for the future, but even without fancy new ships or expansions, the story of Sea of Thieves has as many…

Playing Sea of Thieves feels a bit like working in a theater before the set has been completely built. There’s plenty of space to goof around and a few swords in the wings to have mock fights with, but none of its quite ready for show time. A lack of features and polish has frustrated some players, but those willing…

Sometimes, you need to get a little rowdy when playing Sea of Thieves. But if you cause too much trouble, your crewmates might end up locking you in the brig. Or they might just lock you up for the hell of it. Many solo players joining crews are finding themselves instantly locked up without any warning in a new…

With Sea of Thieves officially out for a couple of weeks now, much of the discussion seems to have revolved around the lack of stuff to do. At Kotaku, many of us have found a ton of fun with the game. I asked our resident captains Chris Person, Heather Alexandra and Tim Rogers to sit down and chat about their thoughts…

Sea of Thieves is a grindy game where even high level quests can grant only a pittance of gold and reputation. One dedicated streamer has reached maximum reputation with the game’s three factions to become a pirate legend and unlock a secret hideout.

Being a pirate in Sea of Thieves sometimes means being an asshole, using whatever methods you can to kill your foes and plunder their loot. Some Sea of Thieves players are taking this to the next level by relying on hacks to conquer the high seas.

Sea of Thieves is off to a rocky start; it’s a cool game but feels a bit like a beta. Developer Rare has been trying to address this by adding new features. One proposed feature, a sort of death tax, was met with immediate community disapproval, prompting Rare to quickly cancel the feature.

Sea of Thieves is mostly about hunting down treasure with your friends, but every now and then things get ugly. In a game where everyone wants loot and crews can battle each other at the drop of the hat, the line between being a pirate and being a jerk feels razor-thin.

Banjo and his partner Kazooie haven’t been in a Nintendo game since 2005’s Banjo-Pilot thanks to complicated intellectual property rigamarole that cropped up when Microsoft acquired Rare in 2002. With a new Smash Bros. coming to the Switch, there’s plenty of speculation about new fighters. Microsoft’s Executive Vice…

It was anything but smooth sailing for yesterday’s global launch of Sea of Thieves, as the game’s servers struggled to keep up with a massive influx of new pirates. Players were plagued by problems connecting to the game, random disconnects, matchmaking errors and more. At one point, developers had to temporarily…

Sea of Thieves is no place for the solo swashbuckler. Bereft of boisterous crewmates, strange thoughts enter the mind. Thoughts like, “Well this isn’t fun at all,” and “Hey, if I stand on a rock the skeletons can’t attack me.”