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Sea of Thieves is testing custom servers for content creators

This is just in Alpha... for now

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a creepy skeleton sits on a throne, surrounded by lit torches, in Sea of Thieves 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.

Rare is adding a new feature to Sea of Thieves that will help creative players bring projects together more easily. Private servers are coming to the game, but the feature is currently in a limited alpha.

Fashion shows, legendary races, fishing competitions, and trivia are some of the non-standard activities that players have created and streamed in Sea of Thieves, but the way the game works often hampers such creative efforts. Players can join a host’s ship, but they cannot join a specific server — if there isn’t room in their friend’s ship, they cannot join. Right now, players can work around this restriction by finding someone else on the server willing to share their ship with friends, but that’s unreliable and tricky.

Custom servers are intended to solve that issue. Right now, Rare will be working with established creators and groups within the Sea of Thieves community in order to gather feedback and data.

In a blog post on the game’s official site, executive producer Joe Neate shared the following key features (and one big drawback over the standard Adventure mode):

Ability to set up a Custom Adventure Server

Customisation of ship numbers and types prior to starting

Generation of a code to distribute to community members to allow them to join

No gold or reputation progression from Custom Server sessions

Because “custom servers cost money to run,” the original test will start small, and the feature may eventually become a paid feature in the in-game store that anyone can purchase. This Alpha will help determine what features players might want from this eventual server option.


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