There's also a special quest that'll go live with the free week -- find Duke in the tavern to jump into a limited-time Mercenary Voyage. If you get a friend code for Sea of Thieves and like what developer Rare is putting down, you can buy the game at a 35 percent discount between February 6th and 27th on digital PC and Xbox One stores.

Rare has rolled out consistent (and free) updates for Sea of Thieves since its launch in March 2018, including expansions and bug fixes. The latest update arrives on February 6th, coinciding with the three-free-friends week, and it significantly decreases the game's installation size. Xbox One versions will drop from 35GB to 10GB, Xbox One X editions go from 47GB to 25GB, and PC decreases from 47GB to 27GB. This is great news, but it does require players to re-download and reinstall the entire game from scratch.