Rare has posted a video addressing the problems Sea of Thieves has faced since it launched on March 20th .

The ten minute long video presented by Rare’s studio head Craig Duncan and Sea of Thieves executive producer, Joe Neate, talks about the problems that players are having and what the studio is doing to tackle them.

The video has already had over 120,000 views, and has received many positive comments from gamers thanking the developers for their transparency.

Rare mentions that the overwhelming number of players at launch is causing issues trying to find a game at peak times. Whilst Rare did carry out pre-release scale tests, more than one million unique users have logged in since launch compared to the 332,000 during the closed beta. During peak times, there are more than 5,000 people attempting to join per minute.

The matchmaking system is suffering because there are two stages. One stage gets a player into a crew, and another gets a crew into the world. The temporary fix that Rare suggests is to join an existing in-game crew to skip one of the two required matchmaking steps.

Other big issues players have faced include missing rewards, items disappearing and a delay in receiving achievements. Quest rewards are crucial to the game, as players’ reputation increases when they receive gold. Rare suggests the best solution is to just keep playing as the delay is due to server loads, so rewards will eventually appear. They advise not logging out to avoid having to rejoin the long matchmaking queues.

The video ends with the developers thanking people for playing: "We absolutely thank everyone for playing. We appreciate the patience and support. Sea of Thieves is super important to us, a real passion project, and we want to get to a state where everyone has a good time all the time, every time they play."