Sea of Thieves’ Season 14 Update Riddled with Issues, Developer Rare Rolls Back New Features

Just days after the launch of Sea of Thieves’ stealth-focused Season 14, Rare has yanked nearly all its new features, including the ability to crouch and don disguises, due to “significant issues” arising from their addition to the game. This decision comes on the heels of a slew of promising new features being disabled ahead of the season’s launch due to stability concerns and a “high player impact issue” discovered during testing.

But what’s behind this sudden drastic measure? In a video update, Sea of Thieves production director Drew Stevens revealed that the introduction of crouching had introduced a host of unforeseen problems to the wider experience, including the resurgence of PvP exploits Rare had previously sought to eliminate. These include the ability for players to switch weapons more quickly than intended and to control their air movements following a cannon blast.

“We’re really unhappy about the quality of Season 14’s launch,” Stevens acknowledged, vowing to take the situation very seriously. The studio prioritizes stabilizing the player experience, and will re-enable features once they meet their quality bar.

As part of this hot fix, Stevens announced that crouching and disguises would be temporarily disabled, with the hope of reintegrating them into the game as part of a high-impact issue fix scheduled for next week. Stevens stressed that Rare won’t rush the release of new features and instead will prioritize meaningful improvements, taking the necessary time for internal quality assurance.

Meanwhile, traps and ledge hanging, which were initially disabled ahead of Season 14’s launch, will be re-enabled as part of the November update, which promises a host of fixes, improvements, and balancing changes. This update will also see Rare trialing a new process aimed at providing longer testing periods and additional quality assurance.

“We all understand how frustrating this has been,” Stevens said. “We know we need to do better, and Season 14 has suffered from a lack of quality control. We’ll be all hands on deck through the next releases to get back in control of game quality.”

Currently, only a few Season 14 features remain enabled, including the grappling gun and new blowdart weapon. With the end of the 2024 roadmap, Rare has yet to reveal its plans for the future of Sea of Thieves beyond the steady reintroduction of currently missing features.