Gold Death Tax to be Removed, Griefing Under Discussion & a New Game Client Today

Just prior to the launch of Sea of Thieves, Rare announced that players would need to pay a "death tax" to the Captain of the Ferry of the Damned in order to resurrect. At the time, it was said that a "small gold fee" would need to be paid. However, after player outcry, Rare has reversed the decision and will not bring the death tax into the game.

Other snippets of news from the Launch Status Update letter include:

• a new game client will be released today with a "wide array of fixes across our services, stability and game experience". It is a full game update, not "just a patch"
• "We are very aware of the topic of persistent player griefing. We are discussing what short-term fixes we can make".
• Player rewards being delayed is being addressed by the entire team with "all efforts being focused on addressing this ASAP".
• Achievements being delayed - this is a work in progress with no ETA for now
• Peak time overcrowding - a series of fixes have been deployed and "broadly we feel we are on top of this now"

You can read the full status update on the Sea of Thieves site.

In other Sea of Thieves news, these poor pirates lost 130 chests, 15 relics, 30 skulls, 8 teas, 5 spices, 2 sugars, 3 stronghold chests / skulls after nine hours playing due to the Almond Beard error. If you don't know what that means, it is essentially a disconnect from the server and it wipes all progress, though it is "fixable" in most cases. But, still...can you imagine?