How many people play Sea of Thieves? — 2024 statistics

Sea of Thieves had 40 million players in its lifetime.

(Source: Xbox, CharlieIntel)

• June 2020 was the best month for the game with 3.3 million new active players.
• It took the game two years to reach 15 million players.
• Sea of Thieves passed 25 million players in 2021.
• The game had more players in the first six months of 2020 than the entirety of 2019.
• The launch of the game on Steam was also a contribution to the increase in the player count.

This is a nice little overview of what Sea of Thieves has been able to accomplish in the gaming industry thus far, and it is amazing to see that it has amassed over a dozen million players, and is still growing with no signs of stopping.

Sea of Thieves sales reached over 9.6 million copies on Steam.

(Source: VG Insights)

• The game has grossed over $259.4 million on Steam.
• 89.9% of the game’s reviews are positive.
• The average playtime is 134.7 hours.
• The median playtime is 66.1 hours.

Since Sea of Thieves is a single game, not belonging to a series, and Rare is not too keen on sharing periodical information on the game’s total sales, we’re unfortunately limited to the numbers for Steam, only. Nevertheless, from what we can see, the game has generated tremendous profits for Rare and Steam as a result and the sales are quite healthy for the type of game that Sea of Thieves is.

Sea of Thieves’ peak player count on Steam is 66,632.

(Source: SteamCharts)

• The game’s average player count for 2023 at the time of writing is 11,580.
• The game’s peak player count has decreased by 70% from June 2020 to June 2023.
• The largest increase in the game’s average player count occurred between May 2021 and June 2021, with an 81.27% increase in players.

When a game is available on multiple platforms like Sea of Thieves, you’re just never going to get an accurate reading of its total player count and the average player count on the level of the game entirely. However, for Steam it’s a different story as we can see. The game does not have a monumental number of concurrent players at the time of writing and its peak count was not that high to begin with, but it does not detract from the quality of the game in the slightest.

33% of Sea of Thieves players never reach the sea.

(Source: PC GamesN)

• A Reddit user noticed that only 67.45% of players completed the Now Bring Me The Horizon achievement.
• This means that 33% of players have not finished the tutorial.
• On Steam, the number of people who got the achievement is 90%.
• This means that there might be a bug that prevents players from completing the tutorial on Xbox.

Every game has an anomalous scenario or two tied to it, and for Sea of Thieves, a game about sailing the seas, a good deal of players never actually reach the sea. This could be due to a variety of factors, from not liking the game to crashes to lack of interest to poor navigation, and even bugs. But it is interesting to see that this is only so high on the Xbox, whereas, on the Steam version of the game, players seem to find their sea legs more easily.

Sea of Thieves players sailed 1.8 billion kilometers in the game’s first year.

(Source: Sea of Thieves)

• Players killed an average of 11 opposing crews.
• Over 642 billion gold was earned.
• Players have, on average, encountered 38 other player ships.
• Salvaged 8 shipwrecks.
• Taken on 5 skeleton forts and battled 8 skeleton ships.
• Seen the Kraken twice.
• Been menaced by 7 Megalodons.
• 844 million islands were visited.
• 3/4 billion items were traded.
• From those, 314 million were in chests.
• 226 million were in bounties.
• 206 million were in cargo.
• 70.1 million achievements were earned.
• Over 100 million cosmetic items were purchased.

From this line of stats, we can see that Sea of Thieves players are quite… taken with gold in any capacity and that the gameplay dynamic of completing assignments works phenomenally well. The stats are well spread out across everything the game has to offer, and, of course, we have hats as well.

1.08 million Sea of Thieves players were launched onto an enemy ship in 2020.

(Source: Twitter)

• 1000 days after the game’s launch, the developers shared some insight into how some players choose to enjoy the game.
• 114,000 players used sick to blind enemies.
• 2.7 million players defeated a Kraken.
• 469,000 players became Pirate Legends.
• 17,634 payers slaughtered at least 1000 skeleton captains.
• 10 million players have been sick.

These are just a few more stats for the game that the developers decided to share with everyone in pride of their game being around for 1,000 days. It’s a small thing, but it means a lot that the devs would pool over the stats to give their community something to appreciate.

Sea of Thieves had 68.8 million hours watched on Twitch in 2021.

(Source: SullyGnome)

• The game had 4.5 million broadcasting hours.
• There were 7,863 viewers watching the game on average.
• There were 515 channels streaming the game on average.
• It had a viewer ratio of 15.2.
• Its peak viewer count was 204,698.
• There were 286,987 broadcasters that streamed the game.

Twitch is just about as good of a platform as you can find that will tell you how popular a game is in the community, and Sea of Thieves has performed quite well in the majority of the years it has been out, with a decrease of 10 million hours watched between 2021 and 2022. Nevertheless, this game has been a major hit for fans of gaming that prefer to take a more passive approach.

To sum up

This is where our voyage, regretfully, ends. Sea of Thieves is definitely one of the best pirate-themed games to ever come out and we’re extremely glad to be able to deliver this content to you to paint this game in the best of lights. From the millions of players that play the game to the billions of gold they ransacked in the game’s first year, it is quite evident that the game will continue to grow through the coming years, and we’ll be here to update you on anything new that might show itself on the horizon.