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Sea of Thieves launches on Steam on June 3

A new avenue to be a pirate

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Sea of Thieves - a player ship fights off a skeleton ship Image: Rare/Xbox Game Studios
Cass Marshall is a news writer focusing on gaming and culture coverage, taking a particular interest in the human stories of the wild world of online games.

The Window PC version of Sea of Thieves, the rollicking sandbox pirate adventure game from Rare, is coming to Steam on June 3. The game will be available for $39.99, and all progress from other versions of the game will carry over. There will also be full cross-play, so Xbox One, Windows 10, and Steam players will all be sailing the same sea. This could be a good avenue for new players to get into the game, but it also has some benefits for veterans.

The Steam version will require players to sign in with an Xbox Live account, and link their Steam game to their Xbox gamertag. It’s free to create an Xbox Live Silver account, so there will be no additional fees. In addition, players must be running Windows 10.

Owners of Sea of Thieves on other platforms will have to buy the game again if they want to own the game via Steam; there is no free unlock.

Once new pirates are in, they can check out the Maiden Voyage for a full tutorial on how to play. They can also join their friends’ sessions through the Steam UI, in order to easily jump on an ongoing ship. This is a big advantage to the Steam version; right now, using the Windows 10 Xbox UI to play with friends can be arduous.

Rare has posted an FAQ on Steam that covers questions like frame rate, cross-play, and cosmetics. It’ll be fascinating to see if launching on Steam helps this pirate game grow even further.


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