Sea of Thieves Releases Day One ‘Patch’ for Players

First-person pirate game Sea of Thieves is off to a good first day — server overload aside. The open-world action adventure title momentarily crashed due to an overwhelming influx of players. And while the game’s tech department is working on to ensure stability on their end, developer Rare has released their own take on a day one “patch.”

Pirates Overload Sea of Thieves Servers on Day One

No, we’re not talking about pirates who steal free copies of video games. We’re talking about the population of the servers. The open-world co-op title’s servers went online on March 20. The game is cross-platform, meaning PC and Xbox users share the same servers. This means a less fragmented population, at the cost of increasing server load. Despite pre-release stress tests, the game went down due to the massive playerbase logging on to play the anticipated game.

Sea of Thieves Day One Eye “Patch”

The idea of the “day one patch” is a recurring problem in the AAA games industry. For reasons unknown, publishers seem to think it’s fine to release an incomplete game for its big debut and fix issues as soon as they’re reported. It’s almost as if the games don’t go through pre-release testing to avoid said issues in the first place. So when servers went down mere hours into the game’s release day, players expected Rare to whip up a quick patch.

Ahoy Pirates! We are aware of the Greybeard issues that some of you may be experiencing. Our team is investigating to have this sorted ASAP. We’ll update here when we have more details to share. pic.twitter.com/O41cnbmge3

— Sea of Thieves (@SeaOfThieves) March 20, 2018

The funny part is that 35 minutes after Sea of Thieves’ official twitter acknowledged the server problems, they tweeted this:

How's this for a take on day one patches? Visit any clothing store in #SeaOfThieves before March 29th to pick up the “Day 1 Eye-Patch” for just 1 gold! https://t.co/HVSXZQaR5g pic.twitter.com/jxCjdeWdH9

— Sea of Thieves (@SeaOfThieves) March 19, 2018

That’s right. It’s an eyepatch. Specifically, it’s a black eyepatch with the number 1 stamped on it in bright red. It is unclear whether this was a direct response to the server issues. Maybe the patch was already in the clothing store beforehand and only gained attention after the tweet. Either way, it’s a generous stab at one of AAA gaming’s most widespread problems. And gamers always appreciate a good sense of humor.