Spring is just starting to bloom here at Rare HQ, which means it’s time we got around to the brisk business of rounding up February’s developments! It was a briskly busy month that boasted some extremely exciting announcements, so let’s jump right into the recap…
Content Update
As always, we had a monthly update ready to go, this time integrating Sea of Thieves with the latest Xbox Game Development Kit, making some visual and technical tweaks to various systems – and, most importantly, introducing the first Collector’s Pet fox as the Reaper’s Heart set expanded again in the month of love. For a full rundown of all February’s changes and additions, or just to find out what on earth GDK integration actually means, stop by the relevant release notes and have a read.
With the update behind us, we found ourselves squaring up to another Season’s Community Weekend! That meant encouraging all you fine folks to take to Twitch and watch Sea of Thieves streams, getting that shared Community Emissary Grade up before setting sail and reaping all those increased rewards. At the same time, new Pop-Up Plunder maps had pirates racing to uncover valuable treasures across the seas! All you had to do was find it…
News and Features
One specific piece of Sea of Thieves news somewhat eclipsed the rest this month, but before that, we had to make sure everyone was fully prepared for Season 11 Community Weekend! Early in the month, our Head of Comms Christina stopped by with all the details and a peek at the goodies on offer for anyone who took part.
Then it was time for the big reveal: Sea of Thieves is coming to PlayStation®5 this April, bringing countless more players in to join the crowds merrily playing on our current platforms! This momentous news obviously raised a lot of questions – namely when we can expect this flood of fresh-faced sailors to arrive – so we made sure there was a full article with all the info ready to unleash following the announcement.
Even with all this going on, our regularly scheduled programming continued with fresh Spotlight features: a Creator Spotlight with Jon Bardcore, digging into his journey from a two-year-old with a NES to a fully-fledged content creator, and a Community Spotlight on Captain McGuffin, Head of Forensics at Ancient Isles University and contributor to the Sea of Thieves Portugal community. Give them a read!
Videos and Streams
Getting into the business of the regular content update and Seasonal Community Weekend early in the month, the video team fired off February’s instalment of Sea of Thieves News to get everyone up to speed. Not long after that, the update made its debut and we got to delight in some of the new cosmetics arriving on the seas.
Bringing Sea of Thieves to a whole new platform is extremely exciting news for all of us, so of course we were going to have a little fun with the announcement videos. That meant finally responding to some historic player-submitted messages, before bringing various team members together to share their thoughts on this new chapter for our favourite pirate playground.
With that news out in the world, it was time for our Season 11 Community Weekend, and with it a Community team Twitch stream! As well as offering another option for watching and contributing to the Community Emissary Grade, the stream also let us support our friends over at SpecialEffect and raise money for the wonderful GameBlast24. Thank you to everyone who joined us and for all the amazing donations, helping us to raise over £40,000 for a fantastic charity!
Social Channels
Picture-loving pirates had another two rounds of #SoTShot to enjoy in February: firstly sharing some love for their favourite stories outside the Sea of Thieves with creative costuming for the Cosplay Corsairs theme, then, after the Trading Companies complained about being left out, competing to represent their favourite Company in increasingly elaborate ways. Not to be outdone, the Community Hub also featured a fresh line-up, celebrating everything from a perfect loot steal to the friends we really did make along the way.
Player creations weren’t the only things earning some appreciation: we kicked off February by asking everyone to spend a couple of minutes enjoying the majesty of Season 11’s title screen music (while expanding the repertoire of our official soundtrack on all the usual streaming platforms), before getting sidetracked by that same screen’s troublesome bowsprit. At least nobody had time to get too upset about that before being further derailed by discussions of which Shipmate Trinket is the best Shipmate Trinket (the answer is that they’re all the best Shipmate Trinket, don’t listen to that tweet).
All that debate was exhausting, but it didn’t take long to get into another conversation about which island is the best island to run around. Fortunately, by that point Community Weekend was imminent and Picture Wall selfies were providing ample distraction. So much so, in fact, that we got a little too excited when trying to take our own… no matter. The end of the month was fast approaching, so we capped things off with a few tasty jellybeans.
And that was February! Shortest month of the year it may be, but we all managed to get plenty done, don’t you think? Remember, if you want to share your thoughts or keep up with the news as it happens, check in with us on all the usual social channels: Twitter/X, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, Twitch, and the official Forums and Discord. Otherwise, we’ll be over here trying to find a better word than ‘sink’. Bye!
Previously:
Sea of Thieves Round-Up: January 2024
Continue reading...
Content Update
As always, we had a monthly update ready to go, this time integrating Sea of Thieves with the latest Xbox Game Development Kit, making some visual and technical tweaks to various systems – and, most importantly, introducing the first Collector’s Pet fox as the Reaper’s Heart set expanded again in the month of love. For a full rundown of all February’s changes and additions, or just to find out what on earth GDK integration actually means, stop by the relevant release notes and have a read.
With the update behind us, we found ourselves squaring up to another Season’s Community Weekend! That meant encouraging all you fine folks to take to Twitch and watch Sea of Thieves streams, getting that shared Community Emissary Grade up before setting sail and reaping all those increased rewards. At the same time, new Pop-Up Plunder maps had pirates racing to uncover valuable treasures across the seas! All you had to do was find it…
News and Features
One specific piece of Sea of Thieves news somewhat eclipsed the rest this month, but before that, we had to make sure everyone was fully prepared for Season 11 Community Weekend! Early in the month, our Head of Comms Christina stopped by with all the details and a peek at the goodies on offer for anyone who took part.
Then it was time for the big reveal: Sea of Thieves is coming to PlayStation®5 this April, bringing countless more players in to join the crowds merrily playing on our current platforms! This momentous news obviously raised a lot of questions – namely when we can expect this flood of fresh-faced sailors to arrive – so we made sure there was a full article with all the info ready to unleash following the announcement.
Even with all this going on, our regularly scheduled programming continued with fresh Spotlight features: a Creator Spotlight with Jon Bardcore, digging into his journey from a two-year-old with a NES to a fully-fledged content creator, and a Community Spotlight on Captain McGuffin, Head of Forensics at Ancient Isles University and contributor to the Sea of Thieves Portugal community. Give them a read!
Videos and Streams
Getting into the business of the regular content update and Seasonal Community Weekend early in the month, the video team fired off February’s instalment of Sea of Thieves News to get everyone up to speed. Not long after that, the update made its debut and we got to delight in some of the new cosmetics arriving on the seas.
Bringing Sea of Thieves to a whole new platform is extremely exciting news for all of us, so of course we were going to have a little fun with the announcement videos. That meant finally responding to some historic player-submitted messages, before bringing various team members together to share their thoughts on this new chapter for our favourite pirate playground.
With that news out in the world, it was time for our Season 11 Community Weekend, and with it a Community team Twitch stream! As well as offering another option for watching and contributing to the Community Emissary Grade, the stream also let us support our friends over at SpecialEffect and raise money for the wonderful GameBlast24. Thank you to everyone who joined us and for all the amazing donations, helping us to raise over £40,000 for a fantastic charity!
Social Channels
Picture-loving pirates had another two rounds of #SoTShot to enjoy in February: firstly sharing some love for their favourite stories outside the Sea of Thieves with creative costuming for the Cosplay Corsairs theme, then, after the Trading Companies complained about being left out, competing to represent their favourite Company in increasingly elaborate ways. Not to be outdone, the Community Hub also featured a fresh line-up, celebrating everything from a perfect loot steal to the friends we really did make along the way.
Player creations weren’t the only things earning some appreciation: we kicked off February by asking everyone to spend a couple of minutes enjoying the majesty of Season 11’s title screen music (while expanding the repertoire of our official soundtrack on all the usual streaming platforms), before getting sidetracked by that same screen’s troublesome bowsprit. At least nobody had time to get too upset about that before being further derailed by discussions of which Shipmate Trinket is the best Shipmate Trinket (the answer is that they’re all the best Shipmate Trinket, don’t listen to that tweet).
All that debate was exhausting, but it didn’t take long to get into another conversation about which island is the best island to run around. Fortunately, by that point Community Weekend was imminent and Picture Wall selfies were providing ample distraction. So much so, in fact, that we got a little too excited when trying to take our own… no matter. The end of the month was fast approaching, so we capped things off with a few tasty jellybeans.
And that was February! Shortest month of the year it may be, but we all managed to get plenty done, don’t you think? Remember, if you want to share your thoughts or keep up with the news as it happens, check in with us on all the usual social channels: Twitter/X, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, Twitch, and the official Forums and Discord. Otherwise, we’ll be over here trying to find a better word than ‘sink’. Bye!
Previously:
Sea of Thieves Round-Up: January 2024
Continue reading...