Sea of Thieves closed beta extended by two days

The Sea of Thieves closed beta arrived yesterday, but many players who were granted access after pre-purchasing Rare's first-person open-world pirate game found themselves unable to play. Instead of being able to install and launch the game, many hopeful swashbucklers received an error message stating it was "too early" to play and were locked out. Rare rolled out a temporary fix today and is working on a longer term solution, and to compensate for the trouble the closed beta has been extended by a couple more days to ensure players get enough time in the game.

The beta, originally scheduled to end Monday, will now finish on Wednesday, January 31, at 8am GMT. If you've got access to the closed beta but are still having trouble getting in, Rare has posted instructions on how to install the game via the Xbox Insider Hub.

We've been having some multiplayer pirate adventures of our own, and enjoying the multiplayer ship combat while loathing the Xbox app. Also, Tyler and I discovered what happens when you sail off the edge of the map. It wasn't comforting.

Chris started playing PC games in the 1980s, started writing about them in the early 2000s, and (finally) started getting paid to write about them in the late 2000s. Following a few years as a regular freelancer, PC Gamer hired him in 2014, probably so he'd stop emailing them asking for more work. Chris has a love-hate relationship with survival games and an unhealthy fascination with the inner lives of NPCs. He's also a fan of offbeat simulation games, mods, and ignoring storylines in RPGs so he can make up his own.