How many people play Sea of Thieves? Players and Steam peaks
Sea of Thieves passed 40 million players in April 2024, four times its January 2020 total.
Sea of Thieves passed 40 million players on 17 April 2024, Rare announced, two weeks before the game came to PlayStation 5. That’s four times the 10 million it had in January 2020, before it reached Steam.
Ahoy, matey! Sea of Thieves is Rare’s pirate adventure, where you set sail with friends, or alone if you’re a lone sea dog, roaming the seas and digging for treasure on its islands. How many people play it, and how much gold have they plundered? Here’s what the numbers say. If you prefer cold facts to the cold sea, check out our video game industry statistics too.
Sea of Thieves key statistics
- 40 million: lifetime players by 17 April 2024.
- 10 million: lifetime players in January 2020.
- 66,632: the most players online at once on Steam, June 2020, the month it launched there.
- 1.8 billion kilometres: distance sailed by players in the first year.
- 30 April 2024: the day Sea of Thieves launched on PlayStation 5.
Sea of Thieves players
Sea of Thieves had 40 million players by April 2024
- Less than two years after its March 2018 launch, it had 10 million players.
- The Steam launch in June 2020 brought the best month in its history, with 3.3 million new players.
- It passed 25 million in October 2021 and 30 million in June 2022.
- Game Pass, Steam and the 2024 PlayStation 5 launch all pushed the total higher.
| When | Lifetime players |
|---|---|
| January 2020 | 10 million |
| July 2020 | 15 million |
| March 2021 | 20 million |
| October 2021 | 25 million |
| June 2022 | 30 million |
| February 2024 | 35 million |
| April 2024 | 40 million |
Milestones announced by Rare, collected by Game Rant.
Sea of Thieves set its Steam record of 66,632 players in June 2020
| Year | Most players at once on Steam | Month |
|---|---|---|
| 2020 | 66,632 | June |
| 2021 | 62,889 | June |
| 2022 | 36,840 | January |
| 2023 | 41,364 | March |
| 2024 | 32,905 | May |
| 2025 | 31,500 | February |
| 2026 (to 30 October) | 16,224 | January |
Figures from Steam Charts.
Is Sea of Thieves dying? No, but it’s smaller on Steam than it was. Steam peaks dropped from 66,632 in 2020 to 16,224 in 2026, while the lifetime total kept climbing to 40 million by April 2024. Steam is only part of the picture, since many people sail on Xbox, Game Pass and PS5.
Sea of Thieves in-game stats
Players sailed 1.8 billion kilometres in Sea of Thieves’ first year
In March 2019, Rare shared what players had done in the first 12 months:
- They earned more than 642 billion gold and visited 844 million islands.
- They handed in 750 million items, including 314 million chests, 226 million bounty skulls and 206 million cargo crates.
- They earned 70.1 million achievements and bought more than 100 million cosmetic items.
- The average player sank 11 enemy crews, met the Kraken twice and was menaced by 7 Megalodons.
At 1,000 days, in December 2020, Rare added a few more: 2.7 million players had defeated a Kraken, 469,000 had become Pirate Legends, and 1.08 million had been fired out of a cannon onto an enemy ship.
The stats are spread across everything the game has to offer, which shows how well its mix of voyages, combat and plain mischief works. And yes, there are plenty of hats.
Sea of Thieves had 68.8 million hours watched on Twitch in 2021
- Streamers broadcast 4.5 million hours of Sea of Thieves on Twitch in 2021.
- It averaged 7,863 viewers and peaked at 204,698.
- 286,987 channels streamed it that year.
Figures from SullyGnome. Twitch is a great read on a game’s popularity, and Sea of Thieves has held up well there for most of its life.