Sea of Thieves closed beta returns this weekend for more server testing

Arr, mateys! If you're looking for another chance to be a pirate-slash-guinea pig, the Sea of Thieves closed beta and server stress test is returning this weekend. From Friday, March 2 through Sunday, March 4, anyone who has already participated in the closed beta for Rare's open world multiplayer pirate game will be able to climb aboard the servers again.

"With this added scale we expect – and plan – to see issues, that we can learn from and address. Not only are we looking to hit scale, we will also purposefully be stressing our services by throttling performance at certain times, testing the game in different data centres around the world, and simulating deliberate outages."

While the nature of the server testing means it won't always be smooth sailing, it's a chance to play a bit more of the game before launch later this month. The test begins Friday at 10 AM GMT, 2 AM Pacific time, and ends at the same time Sunday.

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.