Sea of Thieves lets you group up exclusively with friends if that’s what you want to do, but beyond that it’s basically the wild west out on those seas. Players have come together on Discords and the like get together in de facto PvE sessions, but that’s not officially supported. But it sounds like Rare is getting serious about private servers – just expect them to take a while.
“We’ve talked in the past – and more recently – about the potential for private servers in the future for Sea of Thieves,” executive producer Joe Neate says in the latest developer update video. He adds “that’s on our mid-term roadmap, so it’s not in the immediate stuff that we’re working on at the moment. But we definitely intend for private server support in the future.”
Exactly what kind of private server features we’ll have remains to be seen, but Neate’s discussing these plans in the wake of Sea of Champions – a community-run tournament in Sea of Thieves’ Arena mode. Neate says that private servers “would allow this kind of thing to happen more often and make it easier for people to set up.”
You can hear Neate’s comments for yourself in the video below, at the 3:33 mark.
When it comes to PvE servers specifically, Neate told Shacknews earlier this year that “I don’t think we’d ever want to provide an almost kind of authorized specific way for that to happen but that’s me talking, that’s just my perspective.” He added that “In the future, allowing more friends to come together and play in the world in the kind of way that they want, we want to figure out a way to do that but we’ve got some thinking to do.”
More immediately, in October’s Fort of the Damned update, you’ll be able to change the colour of your pirate’s underwear. Clearly, this is what private servers are being built for.
Can you run it? Check the Sea of Thieves PC specs.