We hear about major new additions to Sea of Thieves almost every month, and it was only a week ago that we covered Shrouded Islands, the game’s first narrative adventure—everything after that A new adventure arrives every month. But this time, something is about to be removed.
On the game’s official homepage, Rare stated that they have decided to remove the PvP mode added in 2019: Arena. They explained that only 2% of digital pirates have tried this mode in-game, and they believe their resources could be better used for other aspects of Sea of Thieves:
“This was an extremely difficult decision, but we firmly believe it was the right decision to focus on our plans for the central free roaming adventure mode. Despite the efforts of a talented team, the arena sadly never reached us The goal that was originally set – whether it was to create a real alternative to playing the competitive aspects of Sea of Thieves, or as a short-lived alternative to the gameplay experience if you didn’t have time to contribute to the open adventure segment.”
They went on to explain that the competitive model required more work than expected, while acknowledging that they learned a lot from all of this:
“We learned a lot from the release and development of Arena, but what really stood out was that releasing a competitive mode was a bigger investment and required a bigger creative focus than we realized. Although shared with Adventure Mode A lot of the same mechanics, but it’s a completely different experience that requires a lot of thought-sharing and development effort to keep up with — no longer justified given the size of the audience.”
Arena will be removed at the start of Season 6 on March 10, hopefully enough new content will be added to alleviate the disappointment of losing the mode to some extent. At that point, all players who reach Sea Dogs level 5 will also receive bonus content, and Sea Dogs level 50 players will also receive some special content.