Sea of Thieves Community Direct | March 2026

0:05 Hello and welcome to the Sea of Thieves Community Direct.

0:08 I'm John McFarlane, Head of Creator Engagement,

0:10 and today I'm going to guide you through a treasure trove of discussion.

0:14 Joining me, we have Head of Community and Comms Christina McFairholme,

0:18 Associate Design Director Shelley Preston,

0:20 Studio Creative Director Mike Chapman and Production Director Drew Stevens.

0:26 Today we're going to talk about Season

0:28 20 and how we're evolving our seasonal model,

0:30 we're going to expand on a renewed focus on game

0:33 health and discuss changes coming to our cosmetic strategy.

0:36 And we're going to dig deep into Custom Seas

0:38 and how it unlocks a new era of community creativity.

0:41 But before all that, let's do some reflecting.

0:44 We've covered some of these topics in the last podcast that we did.

0:48 But let's talk about some of the things that we've learned

0:50 from the past Seasons and what some of those challenges were.

0:53 Mike?

0:53 Yes, as we mentioned on the podcast, the approach with 17,

0:58 18 and 19 has been to optimize our plan for regularity.

1:03 So every month there's something for players to to come back and experience new,

1:07 new goals to go and attain.

1:09 But I think the the reality of that is these smaller,

1:15 more piecemeal updates, the pressure that puts on us as a team,

1:19 it means that our original aspirations for a feature has had to get scaled back.

1:26 And now we see that response in the community.

1:29 We've heard it through the big Listen survey.

1:32 The reality of releasing content

1:34 on that rhythm has been really challenging internally.

1:37 And that means that, like, honestly,

1:40 all of us on the team where it's it's really challenging to know that you're not

1:46 able to put your best work out there

1:48 because our initial ambition has to be scaled back.

1:51 And I think we're not feeling good about what we've released.

1:54 Our players are telling us they're not feeling good about what we've released.

1:57 So I think that's really been the main challenge,

1:59 is just not having the time to do the do the ideas and the updates justice.

2:03 So one of the things that we announced in the last

2:05 Community Direct was that we were lifting the NDA for Insiders.

2:09 So how's that affected the game development stuff?

2:11 So for us, it's been fantastic actually.

2:12 After the last Community Direct, we lifted the NDA pretty quickly.

2:15 And that has really changed the shape and nature

2:18 in kind of like volume of feedback, for the better.

2:21 The stand out, if I think about recent weeks and months,

2:24 is the Last Ship Standing technical test.

2:26 There were thousands of people watching it on Twitch,

2:28 when we were testing on the Friday night,

2:29 and it felt like we had so much more telemetry data,

2:32 insight, feedback than we'd ever had before.

2:34 And obviously Shelley, that kind of extends past just like,

2:36 Last Ship Standing, right?

2:37 Yeah, obviously everything that's going through Insiders now,

2:39 but things like the new Bilge Rats Weekender live event that we're

2:43 developing and some of the deeper Hourglass improvement changes as well.

2:47 Having more people be able to see and talk about those with the NDA

2:50 lifted in Insiders has been really valuable in shaping the development of them.

2:54 I think as well, just from a game health perspective,

2:57 if we step back from features, we're getting so many more eyes on the builds

3:01 every single Insiders build goes through every couple of weeks.

3:04 We're getting a better understanding of where the state

3:07 of the game is at any one point.

3:10 So as we're approaching releases now,

3:11 we're seeing bugs coming in from Insiders at a much more you know, louder level.

3:16 And we're able to make sure that we're

3:18 applying resource and teams towards the right areas.

3:21 So I think it's just it also helped

3:22 signal like areas where we need to be improving.

3:26 Before we were clearly getting signals, but it was hard to find them,

3:30 whereas this amplifies it and we we see it much louder.

3:33 So I think we're seeing like feature improvements and we're also

3:36 seeing game health stuff coming through this change to the NDA.

3:39 And especially after Insider tests now seeing

3:43 that dialog happening on social media ongoing,

3:47 just seeing that ongoing a pulse check on the state of features,

3:50 just seeing that organic conversation has been really good.

3:53 And just continuing like some of the things have gone really well.

3:56 We've had things like the Festival of Giving

3:58 and the Community Weekends how did how did they go Christina?

4:01 Festival giving was amazing.

4:03 We had new tech, which is where, you know, you emote, you give something,

4:05 and it was amazing to see how far those cosmetics

4:07 travelled and how much fun people were having with them.

4:10 We've had a couple of Community Weekends which have gone really well.

4:12 We've had loads and loads of players pile

4:14 in and share the amazing stories from those weekends,

4:16 and then we're doing things at the minute we're fundraising for Game Blast.

4:19 We I think we're at right now at time of recording,

4:22 we've just raised over £80,000 for the folks

4:24 at Special Effect, which is amazing.

4:26 So community good vibes, you know,

4:27 they're really high and well, we're not perfect.

4:30 we are making those changes to how we kind of approach development of the game.

4:33 It does I really hope that our players are starting to feel that we

4:37 are making meaningful changes in terms of how we’re developing Sea of Thieves.

4:40 So I just want to pick up on something that you were talking about there.

4:43 You're saying we're listening to the feedback and we have lots

4:45 of stuff going on in the game health side of the game.

4:48 What what's going on there?

4:49 Yeah, I think it's...

4:51 the game health stuff flies under the radar a little bit.

4:54 It's not the biggest, flashiest set of changes.

4:57 And sometimes they're not going to make trailers.

5:00 But we've made some massive changes since the last Community Direct in July.

5:05 Like, we’re sitting in a game now with increased field of view.

5:08 We've got improved weapon switching.

5:11 There's improvements to Cross-Region matchmaking in Hourglass.

5:14 There's a range of improvements where we've just

5:16 gone down to the core experience and said,

5:19 there's something here that we need to go and improve.

5:21 And in the past, we've kind of talked openly that we haven't had space

5:25 and time to go back to old experiences and to bring them up to ship shape.

5:30 But there's some great experiences there where I've kind

5:32 of just talked about those features where we've gone back,

5:34 and that's just on the features side of things.

5:36 There's also long standing bug fixes that over the last six months we've

5:40 addressed like water desync on console is no longer a thing, for example.

5:45 So I think we're slowly but surely working through these game health issues.

5:49 And yeah, I wish they did get some more air time, but I think I,

5:52 even in preparation for this, looked back through the last set of patch notes.

5:57 And you can kind of see real clear game health improvements,

6:00 whether it's features or whether it's key bug fixes.

6:02 And that was a real commitment from us last time to say,

6:06 hey, this is a renewed investment in game health.

6:09 So yeah, I'm feeling really good about that.

6:10 And on that point, there's,

6:12 fixes to the core experience as well as part of game health.

6:15 So we've got our first set of improvements to just general population of how

6:19 often it feels like you're coming across

6:22 those of the players and having those encounters.

6:24 We've got a set of changes coming out that we're going

6:26 to be rolling out more changes and assessing it live over time.

6:30 But we're really hoping that that feel of the seas,

6:32 feeling more alive is something that people can meaningfully

6:35 see and feel by the time they see this video.

6:37 Coming across other players in the shared world

6:40 is the heart of Sea of Thieves I mean,

6:42 separate to any pieces of content the heart of the game is

6:45 you and your crew interacting with other people out there in the world,

6:48 and it's been illuminating to see where we've

6:51 had this issue and the tweaks that we made so far seem to be having

6:55 a huge improvement to people's encounters on the waves.

6:58 So really good stuff.

6:59 Yeah, I was just going to say we've made

7:01 some changes under the hood that we've not told people

7:03 about to see kind of what the responses from a kind

7:05 of a telemetry and a kind of community perspective.

7:08 And we turned, well, I say we turned things on we made a couple

7:12 of changes and within probably a day or two,

7:14 a few partners messaged just been like, what have you done?

7:17 So I think if you think about how meaningful that might feel,

7:19 especially to those people who are playing a lot,

7:21 to see that frequency of encounter just shoot up.

7:24 I'm really excited about the changes we have to come, it's a it's a really,

7:27 really cool part of the game experience and we've got some

7:30 changes coming that hopefully means you bump into more people more often.

7:33 So Christina we had the Big Listen out there and obviously we take those results

7:38 and a bunch of them are around game health that we saw back in there,

7:41 but some of that was around like toxicity right?

7:43 Yeah that's right.

7:44 And so one of the first Big Listens we did that was the kind

7:47 of the real surprise to a lot of us is how kind of game health,

7:50 how the perception of game health is kind of twofold, right?

7:52 It's kind of technical experience,

7:53 but then it's also kind of your experience with the other players.

7:56 And it was really surprising to us how

7:58 much that impacted people's perceptions of game health.

8:00 So off the back of that, we did an additional toxicity survey,

8:04 where we surveyed people on kind of what they perceive to be toxic.

8:07 We listed loads of things, some of which we thought were toxic,

8:10 some of them we thought were, kind of legitimate gameplay experiences.

8:14 But we wanted to see what people thought of them.

8:16 And we've gone away and off the back

8:18 of that, we formed kind of an internal toxicity strikeforce,

8:20 for want of a better phrase, where we're kind of taking a really holistic,

8:24 multidisciplinary approach to trying to make

8:26 the game a better experience for everyone involved.

8:28 So lots of things to dig into there and hopefully lots of things

8:31 to share over future podcasts and Community Directs and Developer Updates, etc.

8:35 But I think one of the key things is we have a set of behaviors

8:39 where we kind of acknowledge there is kind of, a toxic vibe to that encounter.

8:44 And there's other stuff like chasing a another ship

8:46 or dumping loot off the side of the board,

8:48 which I think we would probably traditionally class as legitimate gameplay,

8:52 where the perception is that's toxic.

8:54 So we've got a lot of work to do,

8:55 whether it be kind of educational and kind of providing

8:58 clarity and or making significant changes to the game.

9:00 But so much value has come from those surveys and we are kind

9:04 of all really invigorated and energized to go

9:06 dig in and make some changes there.

9:08 We've covered game health, and we talked about toxicity,

9:10 but I guess the survey also covers like another wide range of topics.

9:14 Is there anything else we want to dive in on here today?

9:16 Yeah.

9:16 So not just the survey but community feedback from quite

9:19 a period of time actually is the perceived kind of cosmetics imbalance.

9:22 So the kind of broad perception is that we are under serving our gold

9:26 stores or our Outpost stores and kind of indexing too hard on Pirate Emporium.

9:30 But that's about to change, isn't it Drew?

9:32 Yeah, I think we'll share some plans a little bit later on specifics,

9:35 but I think it's very clear that for a long

9:38 period of time we've been under serving in the Outpost stores,

9:42 and I think that is about to change.

9:45 Yeah so I think I think just mainly just to acknowledge the fact

9:48 that we've seen that feedback in the community for for quite a while now.

9:53 And I think it's a delicate balance, you know,

9:56 to be absolutely clear what the role of the Pirate Emporium is, you know,

10:01 we're here all of these years later because of the sales of the game

10:06 and what we sell in the Emporium goes

10:08 towards funding the ongoing development of the game.

10:10 And that's an important part of achieving the dreams

10:15 of our community and our dreams as the creators of the game.

10:18 But there has been that imbalance,

10:20 and that's something we're going to need to address.

10:21 We need to look at it very carefully.

10:23 But what goes into the gold store versus what goes

10:25 into the Emporium is something we we want to address.

10:27 And we'll share more details in the future as Drew mentioned.

10:31 On that point, I think what the kind of the recent Doubloon

10:36 reset has taught us is that players are really attached to their currency.

10:39 There's a lot of folks who have speculated, “Oh they've come for our Doubloons.

10:43 Are they gonna come for our gold next?” And Mike,

10:45 are we going to come for the gold next?

10:47 We categorically are not.

10:50 Gold is the driver of that core loop Go into a session,

10:55 do the voyages, explore you earn gold as part of that session.

10:58 That is a reflection of a multi year journey for many of our players.

11:04 We look at Doubloons differently.

11:06 It is a secondary currency is this little micro economy where we're able

11:10 to take the swing that we have and reset for a better future,

11:14 but we have no plans to ever do that with the gold economy.

11:17 Just to confirm.

11:18 We have just touched on the Emporium there,

11:20 but that's not the only thing that's changing to the Emporium, right?

11:23 Yeah,there's quite a few changes coming to the Emporium.

11:26 So we launched the Pirate Emporium in 2019

11:29 and we've been delivering updates monthly since then.

11:33 And I think we've got to a point where there's

11:36 almost 70 individual pages within the Emporium of Cosmetics available.

11:41 And unsurprisingly, our players have told us

11:43 that it's a terrible experience to try and browse,

11:46 and we've got awesome cosmetics within the Emporium that are sitting way back

11:50 chronologically in the back pages is that we kind of want to surface up,

11:54 and show new players that are starting their experience.

11:57 So as part of future Pirate Emporium updates,

12:00 we're actually going to be looking back through our back

12:04 catalog and we're going to be streamlining the experience.

12:06 So there's going to be a reduced set

12:09 of cosmetic sets on offer in the Pirate Emporium.

12:11 But that does mean that it gives us the ability to rotate sets over time.

12:15 Our goal here is to really bring some awesome cosmetics that are kind of sitting

12:20 in the backlog and bring them up front

12:22 and center so that players can have access to them.

12:25 So that's a change that's going to be coming to the Pirate Emporium very soon.

12:28 That's not the only changes we're going to be

12:30 making in the cosmetics and Pirate Emporium side.

12:32 There's also some changes we're going to be making

12:34 to the Season Pass model if you want to dig into that.

12:37 Yeah so our next iteration of the Season Pass will be going live in Season 20.

12:42 And we've worked really hard to try and evolve

12:45 our Season Pass into a much more rewarding and clear experience.

12:50 So not only are we overhauling the UI so that you

12:53 kind of move through these tiers of unlocks as you go through,

12:56 but also the way that you relate to earning renown.

12:59 We're trying to really simplify that and make that feel a lot more meaningful

13:03 for players so it's much clearer what you do to move through the Season Pass.

13:07 In terms of the actual rewards that you unlock as well we’re introducing a new

13:11 set of not only playable rewards in the form

13:14 of limited voyages that you can earn,

13:16 but some of those previously locked in the Emporium items are going to be,

13:21 items that players can choose each time you get to one of those tiers

13:25 of unlock as part of progressing through for free in the Season Pass.

13:29 And we've got the Star Prize.

13:30 And of course, at the very end of all of that, there is the Star Prize,

13:34 which is our new super high quality, super special item,

13:37 that we can't wait to be able to share with people.

13:40 I think it's been good to reflect on the Season

13:42 Pass and the quality of rewards that we're giving to players.

13:46 I think the approach here has been to have less filler,

13:50 I would say in the Season Pass and make sure that all

13:52 of the rewards are going to be seen as desirable by our players.

13:56 As you mentioned, from having the Star Prize there as that ultimate end prize

14:00 at the end of the track to having

14:02 the playable rewards to having the Emporium returning cosmetics.

14:05 I think overall should feel like a much

14:08 more compelling offering to players each Season.

14:09 And I will say I have seen the Star Prize in Art

14:13 reviews and I remember seeing it and thinking, oh my goodness,

14:16 I've not seen anything like that as a cosmetic reward in Sea of Thieves before,

14:18 so I think players will be really excited for it,

14:20 especially if we can show it right now.

14:29 So right now we are kind of in the middle of Season 19,

14:32 and we're due for some exciting stuff for the Bilge

14:35 Rats Weekender and Last Ship Standing coming up.

14:37 But we're in this three act structure

14:38 at the moment but there's changes coming there, right?

14:40 There are.

14:41 So as I mentioned at the start, as a reflection of the challenges that we've

14:44 talked about here today and on the podcast, I think the plan that we had around

14:49 optimizing for the regularity of releases for players.

14:51 So every month, there's always something new to put the focus on.

14:55 We see that less of the headline features of the season

14:58 now are more about building a compelling live service calendar.

15:02 So a big part of this is the Bilge

15:04 Rats Weekender that I players already know about.

15:06 But also Last Ship Standing,

15:07 which has been in Insiders testing, and had some great feedback.

15:10 Do you want to talk a bit more about Last Ship Standing?

15:12 Yeah, so Last Ship Standing is our six ship Hourglass battle.

15:16 Players can vote on that and then emerge

15:18 in the Sea of the Damned in a special map.

15:21 And basically battle to be the Last Ship Standing.

15:23 But unlike our classic 1V1 mode,

15:26 players get rewards based on how they placed within

15:28 that, so it's not quite so all or nothing.

15:31 So even coming second or third can still be netting

15:34 you more Allegiance and more rewards for your for your Hourglass.

15:37 And that will be available for a month as part of Act 3.

15:41 But then afterwards it's going to be coming back regularly for a shorter window,

15:46 but on a monthly basis as well.

15:48 And also coming back on a regular basis is the Bilge Rats Weekender.

15:51 So we've had lots of feedback over the years

15:54 around the various live events that we've run.

15:56 And there's always been that I think we felt

15:58 it always that sense of tension in the community around,

16:01 like, is this ever going to come back?

16:02 Is it time limited to we've always wanted

16:05 this vehicle to bring popular live events back.

16:08 So that's where the Bilge Rats Weekender has come

16:10 from, it's this once a month in world pirate

16:13 festival that celebrates a live event that returns

16:17 as a showcase alongside specific activities to earn the Doubloon currency.

16:22 As part of the Weekender, we've been looking at the feedback we've been

16:25 getting in the Insider forums and we've just

16:26 been putting some time and effort into positioning

16:28 all the elements just right for that first launch.

16:32 So a key part of it is Duke as we've mentioned,

16:35 and Larinna’s stock So around Duke's availability,

16:37 we're going to be keeping Duke around for the month now.

16:41 And in terms of Duke stock, while we originally planned to rotate it each month,

16:45 we're going to be keeping that stock around for longer,

16:48 to just relax that feeling of pressure to coming in to earn those rewards.

16:51 So Duke will be around for a lot

16:53 longer and we'll continue to look at Insider feedback,

16:55 we’ll continue to look how the first one lands and we'll continue to iterate it.

16:59 The Bilge Rats Weekender is very much a platform

17:01 for bringing back some of our most popular live events,

17:04 so it's going to be just interest to see

17:05 how that plays out in the community following release.

17:08 So some awesome stuff coming to Season 19,

17:10 we've talked about some of the changes, that are coming to Seasons all up...

17:14 what's coming for Season 20?

17:17 So Season 20, so last time we sat on the sofa,

17:21 we talked about a very exciting feature set,

17:24 which was Custom Seas we talked about a great

17:27 experience giving players the tools to the pirate sandbox,

17:30 and we talked about that as an experience,

17:32 and I think we even eardropped it as an early 2026 target for ourselves.

17:37 But we also talked about Custom Seas being a premium feature

17:42 that was going to be part of our first pirate subscription.

17:45 So a paid for premium subscription.

17:49 As we've stepped through the development process,

17:52 I think we've started to see the magic of Custom Seas come to life.

17:57 And at this point will have had at least one of our first looks in Insiders.

18:02 I think we've seen internally the excitement

18:05 and the and the magic build from just having given players and creators tools

18:10 to be able to create experiences for themselves.

18:12 And we kind of took a step back

18:15 and took ourselves and took the opportunity to go.

18:19 Are we giving Custom Seas the opportunity to reach its full potential?

18:24 And I think we answered the question no.

18:26 I think by introducing it in the way that we originally

18:30 planned as part of a premium feature set behind a subscription,

18:33 I don't think we were giving Custom Sees the opportunity

18:36 to engage and create a toolset for all of our players.

18:41 So as part of Season 20,

18:42 we're going to be bringing Custom Seas to all of our players free of charge.

18:47 So it's no longer going to be behind a subscription.

18:50 It's going to be available to everyone,

18:52 and we can't wait to bring such a rich toolset to everybody

18:56 and see the magic that players are going to create as part of it.

19:00 So Custom Seas is now going to be free for all players, which is awesome.

19:04 How does it feel to then be bringing that to such a wider variety of players?

19:08 It's incredibly exciting and the way we're testing it

19:11 in Insiders at the moment is kind of piecemeal,

19:12 where they get a glimpse of a feature and a glimpse of a feature here.

19:14 But even with the first version or the first set of features,

19:19 so many of the team was just watching people

19:21 over the weekend have a whale of a time,

19:22 sometimes in languages they didn't understand,

19:24 because they're having so much fun with it.

19:26 I watched so many clips of people just be like, I can spawn a thing here, here.

19:30 So many...

19:30 I watched a ship battle where someone kind of like

19:33 zoomed up and kind of watched it happen from the sky.

19:36 The amount of creative possibilities that this gives folks is just,

19:39 I genuinely feel like it's quite endless.

19:41 Even with such a small version going in Insiders,

19:43 the amount of different types of content we've seen is,

19:45 it's just been incredible to see.

19:47 And I think the team are so energized by seeing that in hands, right?

19:49 I think that's the bit, it's so exciting because we're creating a set of tools,

19:54 but it's not about what those tools are,

19:56 it's about what players are going to do with them.

19:58 And some of that we have no idea.

20:00 And that's what I'm the most excited for.

20:02 Things are going to come out of that- game modes,

20:05 ways people play that we've never imagined.

20:07 And it's really exciting.

20:09 Yeah, the reception was fantastic.

20:10 And to Christina’s point, even a small subset of the ultimate functionality,

20:15 but seeing people being able to spawn things on the fly create these moments.

20:19 And there's a cinematic camera as well, which players haven't seen yet,

20:22 the ability to take these cool screenshots and create these cool videos.

20:26 I think we're going to see a huge range of experiences unlock in Custom Seas,

20:31 from beginning to form the foundations of game modes,

20:35 creating these cool party modes with your friends and just...

20:38 who remembers machinima?

20:39 Like creating stories in the engine of a game.

20:42 Like it really feels like Sea of Thieves is this toybox and we're

20:46 handing that over to our players

20:48 and allowing them more control than ever before.

20:51 So I think the potential to show off some

20:53 of the best moments of Sea of Thieves and see the originality,

20:56 the ingenuity of that community come to life through

20:59 Custom Seas is something we're just so excited about.

21:01 And it goes back to that point of we've

21:04 been so impressed by what we've seen so far, and we don't want to limit that.

21:07 We want to put that in the hands of all of our players.

21:10 And even though there's going to be plenty of tools there and like you said,

21:13 even with a few tools, not even the full package that will be there at launch,

21:17 players are still doing, cool things already.

21:19 But even with that launch toolset,

21:21 we're going to be adding more to it over time.

21:24 We're going to be looking at the things that players want,

21:26 the kinds of things that they want to build but they can't build,

21:29 and iterating and growing it over time as well.

21:31 I think that's our commitment as part of Season 20,

21:34 is that we're going to be in listen mode,

21:36 we're going to release this awesome toolset, but we know it's a starting point,

21:39 and we're going to be listening and watching and laughing alongside our players.

21:43 But our commitment is that this is a toolset

21:46 that we continue to grow and evolve over time.

21:49 And it's the perfect example of a feature set where listening

21:52 to the community and responding to their needs is absolutely critical,

21:56 because we know our community will do things

21:59 with that feature set that we can't expect.

22:01 So and I think that to your point making that commitment up front,

22:04 that this is an ongoing track of work,

22:06 we're going to expand this over time based

22:09 on the needs of the community is really exciting.

22:11 So it's really exciting to see players already

22:13 getting their hands on some of the early features.

22:15 But do we want to talk more about

22:16 the features that are coming in Season 20 Shelley?

22:18 Yeah, sure.

22:19 So in Custom Seas, from the moment you start your session,

22:23 you’ll see so much control at your fingertips.

22:26 When you load into that first lobby,

22:28 you can decide what ships you want in there, how you want your players.

22:31 If you want to put all 24 players on one ship, then go for it.

22:34 You can set a set of what we're calling switches,

22:37 which are things that turn things on and off in the experience.

22:40 So you might want no storms on or no

22:42 AI on because you want a really friendly experience.

22:44 You can set those kind of upfront controls.

22:46 And there are a bunch of presets that we've made there as well for those.

22:50 Y ou can also decide whether or not you want

22:52 to turn on a scoreboard and turn on competitive scoring.

22:55 And then it's up to you to decide what sorts

22:57 of things count and how much those things will award.

23:00 So if you want to award five silver for, for for killing somebody or, you know,

23:05 ten silver for killing a skeleton,

23:07 you can make your own games and your own rules up that way.

23:10 And then when you enter into the session,

23:12 you've got all those controls at your fingertips to be

23:15 able to quick spawn any item that you want, any AI that you want.

23:18 But you can also go into a deeper menu

23:20 and be able to invoke any world event that you want.

23:23 You could start a Fort, start a Fort of Fortune.

23:25 You could spawn a kraken, spawn a meg.

23:28 You can really curate the session how you want it,

23:30 and you've got those controls to kind of move around the world,

23:34 teleport wherever you want to.

23:35 You can also move your ship really easily with a quick sail option.

23:39 You can fly and look around the environment.

23:42 You can use that lovely cinematic camera that Mike was talking about earlier.

23:45 So it really is a wealth of things that you

23:48 can do to just curate the experience your way.

23:50 And there's also legendary locations.

23:52 So there's four legendary locations that are

23:54 going to be available in Custom Seas.

23:56 We've got the Sea Dog’s Tavern, the return of the Sea Dog’s Tavern.

23:59 You'll be able to go inside the Sea

24:01 Dog’s Tavern and create stories and gameplay in there.

24:04 There's the Damned Sea Dog’s Tavern as a twist

24:06 on that, the one from the Adventure.

24:07 There's Tribute Peak,

24:08 so the Shores of Gold being able to have adventures on the Shores of Gold.

24:12 And then lastly there's Old Sailor Isle.

24:14 That was always been that feedback of the Maiden Voyage island is so cool,

24:17 I want to go there with my friends.

24:19 You'll be able to do that in Custom Seas.

24:21 Our intent is also to build and supply additional legendary locations over time.

24:26 One specifically that we're really excited to bring in is

24:30 the Last Ship Standing map in the Sea of the Damned, right?

24:32 Seas of Sailor's Grave.

24:34 Yeah, the opportunity there to bring more legendary locations for players

24:38 to be able to create some really cool experiences with.

24:41 Yeah, we're quite excited by the idea of we've got

24:44 Last Ship Standing as part of our live event calendar,

24:46 we've got that coming back periodically for players to get involved

24:49 in, but it always being available in Custom Seas so people can practice,

24:53 get used to the gameplay, try out different techniques,

24:56 then take that into the event when it's live again.

24:59 Does that mean the hot tub is back?

25:02 The hot tub is back confirmed.

25:04 It needs a good deep clean I think, but it's back.

25:07 So loads of exciting stuff on horizon.

25:09 for Sea of Thieves.

25:10 But what are you guys most excited about?

25:12 Drew I’ll start with you.

25:13 I think I'm just excited to bring this great experience to everybody.

25:18 Like it's been it's we've been developing it for a long while,

25:21 and we've always thought of it

25:22 in that in that little world where it's behind a paywall, behind a subscription.

25:27 And I think we've just we've just released

25:29 it and it's going to go to all players.

25:32 And I just can't wait to see the magic that they create from it.

25:36 How can I not say something for Custom Seas?

25:37 I'm really excited for the cinematic camera.

25:40 I think being able to see the world

25:42 that our players have been playing for so many years,

25:45 from new perspectives and being able to curate machinima and stories

25:49 using that toybox of Custom Seas is going to be so exciting.

25:52 Like some people will know who are listening in, but I was a huge fan of Red vs.

25:56 Blue, so let like being able to create machinima in these game worlds,

25:59 I think is so powerful.

26:00 I'm excited for that.

26:01 But I can have another one, please?

26:03 I am also excited- just building back on the game health point,

26:07 I think obviously we always “Oh Sea

26:10 of Thieves is a unique experience” but there's lots

26:14 of players out there that are struggling with very

26:16 long standing bugs that we've had in the experience.

26:18 I'm actually really looking forward to the game being more stable,

26:22 being more of a solid platform for us to build upon.

26:24 So I think that I've never really said that before,

26:27 but like I passionately believe that game health

26:29 and making the game we've already got as smoothly

26:32 running and robust as possible is really important

26:33 and I am excited for that, alongside Custom Seas.

26:36 And Shelley, what about you?

26:37 Definitely Custom Seas related again for me.

26:40 I'm just really looking forward to that moment

26:43 where players create something that we never saw coming.

26:47 Like we saw it a lot in the early days of Sea of Thieves,

26:49 with some of our features, the way we make our features,

26:52 and we've always had that tools, not rules approach.

26:54 So everything that we make, we make in a way that, you know,

26:57 players are going to do things that we never expected

26:59 Custom Seas is kind of the ultimate iteration of that.

27:03 And I can't wait to see players do something that we

27:05 think oh of all the things we thought they would do,

27:08 we never saw this combination or this type of experience coming.

27:12 That's what I'm really excited for.

27:13 Christina, how about you?

27:15 So I'm cheating and I'm going to say everything that everyone's already said.

27:18 But I'm really excited to see just

27:21 how exactly this unleashes our community's creativity.

27:23 We're going to see things we've never anticipated possible,

27:25 be made a reality in Custom Seas, which is really exciting.

27:29 But in the spirit of community, creativity, and unleashing it,

27:33 there's something that we've been working on behind the scenes.

27:34 It's a small but quite significant thing to folks who have

27:37 already been creating around our game over the past, however many years.

27:40 For folks who are kind of making props, selling them,

27:44 and trying to kind of explore effectively monetizing our game,

27:48 I'm very pleased to announce that as of today,

27:51 we have Creator Commercial Usage guidelines.

27:53 Historically, there's been some ambiguity for creators on like what is and what

27:57 isn't allowed when they're making and selling

27:59 things using the Sea of Thieves IP.

28:00 This provides absolute clarity and really empowers

28:03 our creators to go make and sell, knowing kind of what our kind of framework

28:07 and guidelines are for doing that safely.

28:09 So it feels really good to be able to kind

28:10 of be very clear on what those guidelines are.

28:13 And for us as well, we go we get to go and spotlight those creators.

28:15 Now, we might have shied away historically

28:17 from kind of like shouting out amazing creators because

28:20 they've got something on an Etsy shop that we're

28:22 not sure if we could plug or not,

28:23 but this gives us the framework to go spotlight those folks

28:27 and push people towards their stores and allows us to shout about them.

28:30 So yeah, we're really excited to see what people make.

28:33 We always have been.

28:34 And we want to see links send them to us please.

28:37 So we've got lots to look forward to then.

28:39 And I think that a bit does it for this Community Direct.

28:41 If you want to get involved in the discussion,

28:43 then please head over to our social channels and let us know what you think.

28:46 And if you'd like to try new features early,

28:48 like Custom Seas and have the chance to offer feedback,

28:51 then make sure you sign up for the Sea of Thieves

28:54 Insider programme We'll be back later this summer with another Community Direct,

28:57 where we'll let you know all about everything headed

28:59 to the game in the second half of this year.

29:02 So until then, thanks for joining us and we'll see you on the seas.