There was a pretty big exploit that ran rampant in Sea of Thieves when Season 13 went live. How big? Well, it introduced 300B in gold to the game’s economy and was taken advantage of by 20K players. Those are the figures shared by production director Drew Stevens in the game’s latest video news digest.
While Stevens notes that the exploit was hotfixed out within a few days, it was still widespread enough and did significant enough damage that all players who utilized the bug to their advantage saw their progression eliminated, and he also left the door open for follow-up actions on certain accounts. And while Stevens admits that Rare’s devs should have done better to stop this bug from going live, he also puts the onus on players to behave appropriately.
“Look, this is game development. No matter how tight our processes are, some bugs and unintended mechanics are going to find their way to live. However, players that abused them to gain an advantage should expect to be penalized. […] The responsibility ultimately sits with you as players on how you approach this. Clearly the best approach is report it, don’t use it, and certainly don’t share it.”
Other matters brought up by Stevens during his portion of the video include the formation of a “game health team” that will focus on things like performance improvements and latency fixes, the promise of an upcoming adjustment that will stop Burning Blade player crews from cashing in ship rewards while in combat, and initial word of a grapple gun that’s arriving in Season 14.
Finally, there will be some adjustments to the blunderbuss weapon that will turn it from a mid-range offensive weapon to a close-range defensive weapon, giving it a wider shot spread, the ability to knock targets backwards, and a damage reduction to stop it from one-shotting players; expect these adjustments at some point “on the way to Season 14.”
