Sea of Thieves is Handing Players the Keys to the Seas

Adam ParkHead of Brand & Licencing, Rare Published June 19, 2026 Sea of Thieves: Season 20 is here, and with it arrives Custom Seas – a new way to play that hands you (and your friends) ultimate control of Rare’s pirate paradise! Custom Seas offers a private sandbox and a suite of creative tools that allow you to set the rules governing the Sea of Thieves – which creatures can appear, the time of day, the weapons in players’ loadouts and much more. You can also summon enemies, treasures and items in the blink of an eye, swiftly send players and ships to particular destinations, and freely assign up to 24 players to crews as you see fit. If you’ve ever dreamed of cramming two dozen pirates onto a single sloop, now’s your chance! Silver is an important addition to Custom Seas, but you don’t spend it – it’s a way of gauging your position on dedicated Scoreboards for crews or individual players, according to scoring rules that you decide. Handing in treasure, landing a hit on a ship’s mast, letting your ship sink… once scoring is underway, all of these actions and more can be set to reward or deduct silver, with your choice of score or time limits used to determine who’s victorious. All of this gives you the freedom to create your own game modes, like the ones we showed off during the recent XBOX Games Showcase. Want some extra help setting things up? You can pick pirates in your session and give them permission to access the same tools and commands. Once the action’s underway, you can unleash your inner director and make use of a powerful Free Camera to view proceedings from some truly cinematic angles, adjusting the field of view and other settings to create any pirate epic you desire, including making use of some Legendary Locations that aren’t normally accessible. Ultimately, though, how you use Custom Seas is entirely up to you; you’re just as free to hang out and relax with anyone you’ve invited or shared your unique Join Code with. Of course...