Open-world pirate game Sea of Thieves for Xbox One and Windows 10 PC launched to a tepid reception last year. However developer Rare has released several updates to make Sea of Thieves a better game than what it was at launch. These include the Hunger Deep update which added Megalodons and Cursed Sails which brought Skelton Ships and Cursed Cannonballs to the game. In conversation with Game Reactor, Sea of Thieves Executive Producer Joe Neate let on that the game will get a proper story and quest system designed to fulfil the needs of what he describes as "underserving players".

"I think it's fair to say Sea of Thieves at launch appealed to a certain range of players that love that free-form, creativity, having their own adventures in this shared world, and almost our quest system gives you a little nudge but that's not the only thing that you chase," he said. "But for some people that want guided goals, they want lore, they want story, we know that we're underserving players, but we've proven that we can do it and that it works in the shared world with campaigns we've done around the Hungering Deep or Cursed Sails where you put lore, put story in."

He further elaborated that this meant a new and improved quest system will find its way to the game.

"So we've had a team working on basically a new and improved quest system around story and lore in this shared world for quite a while now actually, and it was originally planned to be our fourth update, but we actually moved it back to next year because we wanted to add and grow. We saw the potential in it and we wanted to really, fully do it justice. So yeah, there's a team working on that, has been for quite a while, will be for a little while more, but I think when we bring that into the game it's gonna appeal to those people that want that crafted lore, want that adventure, want that story, and also maybe appealing to single players as well."

This should help bring players back to the game, which lost a ton of players after being a part of Xbox Game Pass. According to a report from analytics firm Superdata, Sea of Thieves lost half of its user base on expiry of the Xbox Game free trial. The game haemorrhaged close to one million users.

"Sea of Thieves has early success but with a caveat. Sea of Thieves had 1.7 million monthly active users on console and 283,000 on PC during its launch month. However – more than half of these users obtained the game through the limited free trial offered as part of Microsoft's Xbox Game Pass. This leaves some unanswered questions concerning the long-term success of the title," the firm said.

Despite some analysts talking up the advantages of Xbox Game Pass and it not impacting retail game purchases, it appears to have caused an early casualty in Sea of Thieves.

If you're a fan of video games, check out Transition, Gadgets 360's gaming podcast. You can listen to it via Apple Podcasts or RSS, or just listen to this week's episode by hitting the play button below.