Hello, pirates! 2017 has been a jam-packed year for Rare and Sea of Thieves, and as we angle our sails towards that long-awaited launch in early 2018, we’re also coming up on a full year of the Sea of Thieves Technical Alpha. It’s served the game incredibly well and given thousands upon thousands of budding buccaneers a chance to hit the seas on Xbox One and Windows 10 PC – and we’ll soon be waving goodbye to the Technical Alpha in its current form, so this is your final chance to get involved!

Why sign up now if you haven’t already? Everyone who joins the Insider Programme by the cut-off date of Dec. 1 will be invited to the next play session – our biggest and best yet – with the latest brace of brand new features to test. Yes, as promised, all eligible Insiders are now getting their chance to jump in and play Sea of Thieves before its release next year.

It was back in December 2016 that we announced the very first Technical Alpha sessions, following the kick-off of our Insider Programme in November. In the space of a year we’ve scaled up from that first wave of 1,000 players to almost 200,000. We’ve debuted new features from skeletal sentinels to solo ships, welcomed your feedback and used it to balance and finetune all manner of things, honoring our promise to shape Sea of Thieves alongside its community. Now we’re preparing to welcome all those Insiders still waiting to take to the waves, plus all new Insiders who sign up between now and Dec. 1.

So if you haven’t yet pounced on the possibility of playing Sea of Thieves early, waste no more time and join the Insider crew at www.seaofthieves.com/insider. Our Insiders receive regular updates from the development team through official forum posts and newsletters, and of course get the chance to play the game and share their thoughts with us as it continues to evolve.

Joining the Insider Programme is free – you just need to have an Xbox Live account (or set up a new one) and be 18 years or older to sign the NDA. As Sea of Thieves is an online multiplayer game, Xbox Live Gold membership is also required when sailing the seas on Xbox One. Please remember that these Technical Alpha play sessions are purely for the benefit of our Insiders and are currently under NDA, so they can’t be streamed or captured!

For more information about the Insider Programme including some details on eligibility, see our FAQ. And stay tuned to official Sea of Thieves and Xbox social channels for an announcement of the big play session date coming up in December.

See you all on the seas!