Sea of Thieves has just been released last week, and it's already extremely popular with gamers worldwide. In a recent developer update, Rare Studio’s head Craig Duncan and the game’s executive producer Joe Neate talked about the current challenges and problems Sea of Thieves faced recently and the necessary steps they undertook to fix them. The developers also revealed that the game was able to reach 1 million players in 48 hours. 

“We have seen unprecedented numbers coming into Sea of Thieves and playing Sea of Thieves. The interest has been insane; the amount of people playing has been mind-blowing.” 

In the developer video, Duncan revealed that, before the game was supposed to go live on March 20, there are already 5,000 players joining the game every minute. The studio then held multiple scale tests before launch. However, the game received 3-4 times more people playing the game during peak hours. Duncan also reassured players that Rare engineers are working 24/7 to keep up with demand and improve the gameplay experience. 

Sea of Thieves is currently free for Xbox Game Pass subscribers. However, Microsoft did not reveal the details on how many people bought the game directly against those who were able to get it via the Game Pass subscription. 

Lastly, Rare Studios just dropped a massive update for the game today that includes a complete fix for the game’s online features. You can check out the full patch notes here.