Pets have finally arrived in Sea of Thieves as part of this month’s Smuggler’s Fortune update, and with them comes the game’s new real-world cash store.
The Pirate Emporium, as Sea of Thieves’ microtransaction marketplace is known, has been a long time coming, with Rare revealing its intentions to introduce cash purchases to its multiplayer pirate adventure well before its release last March. Now that the store is finally live, however, we can see just exactly where it lies on the ol’ microtransaction exploitation scale.
We had a few hints of how Sea of Thieves’ microtransactions would stack up earlier this week when, during Monday’s developer livestream, Rare displayed US pricing for its premium currency, Ancient Coins. Now though, we can see UK prices for Sea of Thieves’ awkwardly sized Ancient Coins bundles, used to purchase items in the Pirate Emporium:
150 Ancient Coins – £1.69 ($1.99 USD)550 Ancient Coins – £4.99 ($5.99 USD)1,000 Ancient Coins – £8.39 ($9.99 USD)2,550 Ancient Coins – £19.24 ($22.99 USD)4250 Ancient Coins – £29.24 ($34.99 USD)
It’s perhaps also worth noting that Ancient Coins can be earned by defeating “rare” Ancient Skeletons in-game, although, with no clear indication of just how rare these are at present – and no idea of how many coins they might offer – this is likely best treated as a very occasional pleasant bonus, used to top up an existing stash of Ancient Coins, rather than as a means of avoiding spending real-world money altogether.
And with UK prices now revealed, it’s possible to put something like a real-world value on Sea of Thieves’ various new in-game items, even if the variable cash equivalents of Ancient Coin bundle pricing inevitably means that it’s hard to pin down an exact amount.