Sea of Thieves: how Rare silenced the cannons and brought peace to the seas
https://www.theguardian.com/games/2018/jul/18/sea-of-thieves-rare-games-update-the-hungering-deep-cursed-sails-forsaken-shores
When the open-world pirate adventure launched in March, every voyage seemed to end in a fight to the death. So the developers ripped up their plans – and summoned an old legless monster-hunter and a fleet of skeleton ships
Soon after the online pirate adventure Sea of Thieves was released in March, it had become a war zone. The game sees small groups of players board ships and setsail on the open ocean in search of treasure, but every time you spotted another boat, the result would be a fight to the death, cannons blazing and swords swirling. Games developer Rare had hoped that some encounters would be peaceful and cooperative, but the innate competitiveness of the online multiplayer arena seemed to have won out.