Rare Ditches Its Sea of Thieves ‘Death Tax’ Idea

Previously, Rare had planned on implementing a special “death tax” penalty in its latest game Sea of Thieves. It seems that idea has been forced to walk the plank after a cavalcade of negative fan reactions to the idea. Rare has decided to abandon the idea, rather unsurprisingly, as the company has now dropped the idea completely instead of forcing some sort of “death cost” on players.

The idea was first mentioned in a blog where Rare had detailed some of the features that could be coming to the game in the future, which prompted fans to ask what kind of consequences a death cost would have on new players, if it might encourage others to engage in briefing, and other questions. All fair concerns, of course, given the sometimes austere nature of Sea of Thieves.

Letting everyone know we’ve heard the feedback and the proposed ‘Death Cost’ in #SeaOfThieves is, well, dead. We messed up with the messaging around this, and it’s now gone. Thanks for the honest feedback & discussion on this. https://t.co/83pYg5HPbq

— Three Sheets Neate (@JoeNeate1) March 26, 2018

The executive producer Joe Neate took to Twitter to quell the idea that the change would still be coming to the game, so it looks like that’s all squashed now.

“One piece of additional feedback we’ve seen is around a proposed change listed in our release notes last week,” he wrote, “and we’ve heard the sentiment there, so I can confirm that Death Cost is, well, dead. Thanks for the feedback here. We’re listening.”