Since its March release, Rare's Sea of Thieves has found a passionate fanbase, but the game has had its critics. In an interview with GameSpot, the game's Executive Producer Joe Neate, Senior Designer Shelley Preston, and Design Director Mike Chapman discussed its growth since launch and their response to some of the critiques the game has received and how they will fit into future updates.

The developers emphasize how seriously they have taken everything that fans have said about the game. One item that they had to change their stance on was including AI ships in Sea of Thieves. They had previously been very against using them as they wanted every encounter in the game to be emergent. However, according to Neate, now including the AI ships will be a positive thing as he states,

It's also something where we can encourage players to crew up, almost to form alliances with each other and then go and take down these fearsome skeleton ships in the world.

The developers go on to explain that they don't just want to respond to the feedback of fans but also put their own spin on things as Chapman explains,

It's a mix of giving players what they want, putting that Sea of Thieves spin on it, but also surprising them.

He goes on to give the example of not just expanding regions for exploration as per players' requests, but to go so far as creating entirely geologically unstable areas with volcanoes for a more challenging and rewarding experience.

Through all of this, the developers are extremely proud of the game that they have created and the level of community that has formed between players. Neate states,

It wasn't for everyone and not everybody resonated with some of the decisions we made, but we purposely did that so that we could bring multiplayer to a new audience. A new experience and make this fun, welcoming game that broke down barriers.

A free add-on called The Hungering Deep was released back in March for Sea of Thieves, and two more DLC's will also be released later this year, Cursed Sails later this month and Forsaken Shores in September.

Sea of Thieves is currently available for PC and Xbox One. You can head over here to check out DualShockers' review of the game.