Rare have officially announced that the greatly anticipated Sea of Thieves will offer up a technical alpha. This is the first time besides conventions some users will be able to play a bit of Sea of Thieves. The Alpha arrives December 16th and will be exclusive to those selected from the Insider Programme. It will of course come with an NDA attached.

At its heart, our upcoming shared world pirate game Sea of Thieves is all about you, your friends and the high seas adventures you’ll be embarking upon together. With this in mind, our ongoing approach to game design is to craft a wealth of features and systems suited to all manner of player motivations. Our intention is to get that content into players’ hands as soon as possible, giving us valuable feedback and insights into the diverse ways that people will play and experience Sea of Thieves.
As part of our commitment to pulling in player feedback throughout development, we recently launched our Sea of Thieves Insider Programme, inviting passionate fans to sign up and share their experiences and suggestions. Today, we’re excited to announce that our early Technical Alpha phase will kick off on December 16th with a series of scheduled playtests, and we’ll be inviting selected players from the Insider Programme to join us!
Our first Technical Alpha play session will take place this weekend, from December 16th-18th. It’ll be available during several timeslots throughout the weekend, after which we’ll thank our participating pirates and give the servers a rest while we take on board everything we’ve learned, determining the best ways to apply it to Sea of Thieves’ development.