Future Sea of Thieves update will reduce the game’s file size by “at least” half

With many live-service games, years of patches; updates; expansions and other additions can lead to a great deal of bloat, especially when it comes to a title’s size. Fortunately, we’ve seen a number of developers taking to address such issues directly, optimising their games in order to vastly cut down on game sizes. Following the likes of Helldivers II, Marvel Rivals and others, studio Rare has now announced that Sea of Thieves will be receiving an update which will introduce “significant savings” to its own file size.

As part of the team’s latest developer update, Sea of Thieves Production Director Drew Stevens spoke on a number of topics, ranging from the studio’s relocation under Activision; upcoming events; pricing changes and more.

The most interesting update came near the end, where-in the team announced that Sea of Thieves will be receiving an optimisation pass which will lead to a significantly smaller game file size overall, stating:

“Sea of Thieves has evolved and grown over the last 8 years, and our install size has also increased along with it. As we listen to your feedback and recognise that storage continues to become a challenge for gamers, we can see that the game’s install size has crossed a threshold where it’s now become a commonly requested area for improvement.”

While we did not get concrete specifics regarding just how big these savings will be, the team did offer some estimates, claiming that “our goal is to at least halve the game size on 4K installs on PC and Xbox Series X”. For context, Sea of Thieves on both platforms at this point has grown to around 130GB, making the savings significant.

Other platforms are also set to see some savings, with ‘non-4K installs’ (such as Series S) having their sizes reduced by around 30%. Interestingly, the PS5 version will likewise be seeing around a 30% reduction – though it is currently already far smaller than the Series X version at around 80-90GB.

Regardless of your platform, this upcoming update is highly welcome to see. While no release date has been announced, ‘insiders’ will be given the chance to check it out first, at which point the team at Rare will lock down a more concrete date for everyone else.

KitGuru says: Are you glad to see more developers actively trying to decrease their games’ file sizes? What other titles could desperately do with a culling? Let us know down below.

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