Sea of Thieves closed beta had more than 300,000 players

By Asher Madan
last updated

Sea of Thieves' closed beta seems like quite the success with hundreds of thousands of players and millions of views.

Sea of Thieves is an upcoming exploration-based pirate game from Rare. The developer is known for many famous franchises including Banjo-Kazooie, Conker, and GoldenEye. However, in recent years, the team has focused on developing Kinect games for Xbox One and Xbox 360. This was regarded as by many in the gaming industry as a disappointment because the talent was being wasted on a peripheral with an uncertain future. Years later, with the Kinect out of the picture, the developer finally got a chance to showcase its creativity in new ways. When Phil Spencer became Head of Xbox in 2014, he assigned the team a new project. Sea of Thieves is a shift for the developer and a concept the studio hasn't tackled before.

Recently, a closed beta for Sea of Thieves took place and it quickly became the most popular game on services like Mixer and Twitch. The closed beta offered a small slice of the entire game so that Rare could test out matchmaking and other basic features. However, we didn't know the exact statistics for the test until now. An image from Rare's offices made its way to ResetEra which detailed everything from player count to concurrent streamers. According to the website, the photograph was captured by a Twitter user who toured the building after the beta ended.

Some of the highlights are listed below.

  • More than two million in-game hours played.
  • 314,021 total players.
  • 35,882 peak concurrent players.
  • 402,488 quests completed.
  • 14,260,440 hours watched.
  • 104,204 average viewers.
  • 269,000 concurrent views on Twitch.
  • 871,180,805 gold earned.
  • 132,969 players sailed the sea alone in a ship.
  • 121,748 players were part of a two-person crew.
  • 160,797 players were part of the standard four-person crew.
  • 30,595 content creators.

From this data, it seems as though the Sea of Thieves closed beta was quite popular. While the player count isn't as high as what we usually see for such tests, the viewership definitely is. If Rare delivers on its promise with the final version, hopefully the increased visibility on game streaming platforms will bring in more players.

Sea of Thieves has been delayed a few times but we finally have a concrete release date. As announced at The Game Awards 2017, the game is now scheduled to launch on March 20, 2018, across Xbox One and Windows 10. The game will also support Xbox Play Anywhere and native 4K resolution on Xbox One X.

Keep an eye on WindowsCentral.com/Gaming for all the latest in Xbox and Windows 10 gaming, accessories, news, and reviews!

Asher Madan
Asher Madan

Asher Madan handles gaming news for Windows Central. Before joining Windows Central in 2017, Asher worked for a number of different gaming outlets. He has a background in medical science and is passionate about all forms of entertainment, cooking, and antiquing.

8 Comments
  • And I've never found a good team
  • I did, made 15 friends on Xbox because of it, only time I got frustrated was when I was alone at an outpost and was blindsided by a 4 man crew, but even then I respond under there ship and swam on the opposite side and killed a guy with a Blunderbuss point blank and took there chest. Jumped into the water and got swarmed by 6 sharks. That's why I walked away, from playing it single player, it's stupid because you can't treasure hunt and watch your ship at the same time. Anyways, I would recommend using the find a group feature that Xbox has, make sure you use a mic too, and you should have a good time.
  • So many people complaining about the lack of content and yet so many hours played and viewers. I know it is new so those numbers might be skewed but I have good feelings about the entertainment I'll get from this game.
  • unless you like just going from island to island digging, where enemies are trivial and other pirates obnoxious then you'll find it short of content. Been playing since first alpha, and it still isn't close to a "game." lots of ideas and systems, but not nearly enough content. It's also brutally lacking in skill matchmaking. Let my kids play it, and was simply them getting sunk over and over and over by adult better players. Not fun at all for them.  At this stage i wouldn't recommend a pre-order. 
  • The devs did say that the Beta very much like the Destiny 2 beta had much of the content locked. A couple of players on console got bugged clients which gave them the whole game (apparently) but there will be a lot more stuff come launch in March.
  • I hope that's true because right now it feels like a steam alpha from an indie studio. 
  • that graph is stupid. Some idiot with a twitch account isn't a "content creator"
  • "While the player count isn't as high as what we usually see for such tests" Unless I'm mistaken, this beta only took those of us who registered by early December. I think many people missed the window thinking they could jump in at any time. I personally loved the game as did my stepdaughter, we watched each other play single player mostly. I agree that the people complaining about lack of content need to keep their expectations in check considering so much of the game content is being held for release.