Sea of Thieves Review (Ampolovisky)
The game itself is fantastic—the ship and wind mechanics, PvP battles, and especially the stunning wave animations make for an incredible experience. But in its current state, I cannot recommend it. The game is plagued with exploits and, worst of all—cheaters.
But hey, you can just report them, right? Sure! You just need to follow these SIMPLE steps:
Pre-record all your gameplay or use an instant replay feature (Don't have a high-end PC? Too bad!)
Manually gather evidence and put together a solid report.
Submit the report through a long, outdated browser-based process with strict criteria (such as capturing the cheater's nametag—which is much harder than it sounds).
Deal with ridiculous limitations—only five evidence files per report, each under 50MB. If your files are too big, you’ll need to upload them elsewhere.
Easy peasy, right? And even if you do all that and receive confirmation that the cheater was banned, it's just a minor inconvenience for them. Why? Because of ban evasion. Without going into too much detail, they can simply create a new account in under five minutes—without even repurchasing the game.
But I still like the game. Can I give feedback, suggest solutions, or discuss the cheater problem with the community?
Whoa, whoa! Easy there, champ. Turns out, that’s not allowed either. Apparently, players are only supposed to report cheaters and trust that the devs are “working on it.” But hey, give them time—it’s not like this game has been out for over five years, right? 😃
Here’s part of a response from a staff member on the official Sea of Thieves forums:
" Dropping anchor here as while we know this comes from a good place and of wanting to make the game better, and we do as well, the forums is not the space to discuss solutions when it comes to these things. This is because only the internal team know of what is and isn't possible and it is not something that is easily solved or has a quick solution. "
To summarize:
Reporting a single cheater takes far too much time. And if we consider the time a player loses at the hands of a cheater, let’s not forget:
You could lose a boat full of treasure (representing two or more hours of gameplay).
You could lose an Hourglass streak that took several hours to build.
And now, on top of that, you’re expected to waste more of your time filing a detailed report—a job that shouldn’t be yours in the first place.
To be fair...
They do fix exploits—eventually.
But if you don’t mind a game infested with cheaters, go ahead—it’s a great game.
And always remember: they're working on it. 😉