https://www.pcgamer.com/sea-of-thieves-cursed-sails-brings-alliances-and-the-undead-at-the-end-of-july/

Sea of Thieves will get more dangerous, and more social, when the free Cursed Sails update arrives on July 31. Developer Rare said the update will "change things forever" by adding literal skeleton crews to the high seas, and a new alliance system that will make it easier to take them on. 

"The sails you see cresting the horizon are no longer guaranteed to be other players making their own way through the world. The decks beneath those masts may now be manned by skeletal marauders returned to the seas from their restless graves," Rare wrote. "All that sustains these grinning terrors is a thirst for battle that leads them to terrorise Outposts and call out defenders to face them on the tides..."