According to developer Rare, the upcoming Sea of Thieves has achieved such a heavy level of trust with Microsoft that the company will not have to undergo the traditional certification process when the game finally releases next year. Normally a title must be extensively tested by those responsible at Xbox, a time-consuming process that requires a lot of effort and time in order to discover bugs and issues. But the new pirate-themed title is seen as being so trustworthy that the publisher is willing to bypass regulations entirely.

This special treatment is due to the amount of working iterations that Rare has submitted to the team at Xbox in the past, with the developer releasing a new copy of the title each week. Evidently the team is doing something right with Sea of Thieves and when the game is eventually ready to launch, the title will simply release with no additional testing.

Sea of Thieves Officially Confirmed

Executive Producer for Sea of Thieves Joe Neate spoke about the unique process at PAX AUS this year, informing fans just how much effort the team at Rare is putting into making sure the upcoming game is working as intended.

"We release a new version of the game every week and we’ve built that muscle over the last 18 months. We’ve done more content updates than pretty much any game in the Xbox portfolio, and we’re not out yet."

The developer continued on to say that, even with some of the more impressive updates, the Sea of Thieves bug count is continuously under a hundred with each release, with most games reportedly in the multiple thousands as they begin to approach their due dates. To the confident team, the launch window is just another release to get ready for, though Neate joked that "this will be amazing if it goes wrong."

The Sea of Thieves team will stop adding new content to the title just a week before launch, with a three-day window initially suggested in the past. Those who want to try the game a little earlier can do so by signing up to the technical alpha for a guaranteed invite once the company is ready for more extensive testing from its fan-base.

Sea of Thieves is expected to release in early 2018 for PC and Xbox One.

Source: Stevivor