Ahead of an official reveal, Sea of Thieves has been outed as an upcoming Steam release due to its new store page popping up. The Steam store page doesn't list an official release date - for now it just says "coming soon" - so it remains to be seen whether Microsoft planned to announce this as a one-off reveal or if it was to be part of a broader presentation.
Just yesterday on IGN's Podcast Unlocked, Phil Spencer spoke to host Ryan McCaffrey about the Xbox team's plans to have several presentations between now and the launch of this fall's Xbox Series X. As of now though, no presentations have been publicly announced. Then again, maybe the game's Steam launch was never intended for such a show.
Sea of Thieves just celebrated its second anniversary on March 20. After a rocky launch where many players criticized a perceived lack of interesting content, the game has received monthly content updates and has turned itself from a launch day flop to a Game Pass hit. Recent re-reviews of the game, like on IGN, have been much more favorable to the game as well, citing the many changes and improvements Rare has made since 2018. Sea of Thieves was the first Xbox Game Studios title to launch day and date into Game Pass alongside its retail release.
Microsoft has since made it policy to release first-party titles directly into Game Pass, a move that has earned the brand tremendous appreciation from many players after a generation of being outsold more than two-to-one by rival PlayStation. Xbox is also no stranger to bringing its games to Steam, sometimes after a delay like the recent launch of State of Decay 2, but other times with a simultaneous release, like last week's Bleeding Edge.
