Sea of Thieves developer Rare has announced its first ever Community Direct broadcast to discuss the game's imminent and longer-term future, a week after Microsoft's latest round of layoffs hit the studio hard.
Rare was one of several Xbox teams that suffered cuts as part of last week's devastating decision by Microsoft to shed around 9,100 employees across Xbox and its wider company.
The changes saw Everwild, Rare's long-gestating fantasy project, canned after around a decade in development, while numerous staff members working on the title — including, it's believed, Rare veteran Gregg Mayles — are now expected to leave the studio.
Against that backdrop, Rare has said it will now talk directly with Sea of Thieves fans about the future of its long-running pirate live-service game, firstly about the in-development content coming throughout the rest of this year — and then what's next for the game overall.
"Join core crew members for the first ever Sea of Thieves Community Direct, where they'll talk about upcoming Seasons, big Insider Programme changes and a much-requested feature that's recently been ticking away in development," Rare said today in a description for the broadcast.
The livestream will be held tomorrow, Thursday, July 10 at 3pm UK time — that's 10am Eastern or 7am Pacific.
Sea of Thieves has been a success for Rare, with a continued strong community that has kept the wind in the game's sails through to its current 17th season. Originally launched on PC and Xbox in 2018, Sea of Thieves has also been a hit on PlayStation, where it topped the charts upon its arrival there in 2024.
Last week, Xbox chief Phil Spencer said the staffing cuts and the cancellation of projects like Everwild and the Perfect Dark remake were necessary to ensure the company's continued success, and to allow Xbox "to focus on strategic growth areas."
"If a game was in development for 7~10 years, canceling feels like the worst move," EA Japan boss Shaun Noguchi said in response. "That’s a decade of work, potentially a quarter of someones (sic) entire career completly (sic) lost. Even if the final product isn’t what people originally expected, I think it still deserves to ship."
Tom Phillips is IGN's News Editor. You can reach Tom at [email protected] or find him on Bluesky @tomphillipseg.bsky.social
