Buy it if your crew is two to four people on different machines who want one world to mess about in. Do not buy it if they want a game with a finish line
The verdict first: Sea of Thieves is still the easiest “we are all on different consoles” recommendation on this site, and it is also the easiest one to return. Xbox's own listing for the 2026 Edition carries Online co-op (2-4), Xbox cross-platform co-op and Xbox Play Anywhere, and PlayStation's page promises cross-platform play in a vast open world that supports up to 24 online players with PS Plus. A ship takes four. The world holds a couple of dozen - and most of them are not on your side.
That last clause is the whole purchase decision. This is a shared-world game with real player-versus-player combat in its default mode, so a crew that wants to co-operate against the game will spend some evenings being robbed by other people instead. Some groups find that the best thing about it. Groups that wanted a four-player mission game will be furious, and should buy Deep Rock Galactic or Helldivers 2 instead - both take four, both have crossplay, and neither lets a stranger sink your evening.
Is Sea of Thieves worth it in 2026? For the right crew, and probably for free
Check your subscriptions before you buy anything: Xbox lists this game as included with Game Pass Premium, and it also appears under PC Game Pass and Ultimate. If anyone in the crew is already paying for one of those tiers, their copy is already paid for, and on PC that includes the Play Anywhere arrangement - buy or subscribe once, play on console and PC. The cloud version is listed as playable with Premium and Ultimate; Xbox's own page notes that streaming on the Essential tier requires buying the game. Our Game Pass crossplay pagecarries the tier explainer and the rest of the catalog's crossplay titles.
On PlayStation there is no equivalent inclusion to rely on: the game arrived on PS5 on April 30, 2024 as a purchase, and PS Plus is required for online play on top. The free-versus-paid breakdown runs the arithmetic for a mixed crew, and the honest answer is that the cheapest crew is one where the Xbox or PC players already subscribe and the PlayStation player buys the standard edition.
Is Sea of Thieves crossplay? Yes - with one condition every PS5 player must meet
Yes, genuinely and in every direction: Xbox lists Xbox cross-platform multiplayer and Xbox cross-platform co-op, Steam lists Cross-Platform Multiplayer, and PlayStation describes cross-platform play on its own page. An Xbox, a PC and a PS5 can crew one ship. The condition is the Microsoft account: PlayStation's listing states that Microsoft account registration and acceptance of the Microsoft Services Agreement and Privacy Statement are required to play. It is free, it takes a few minutes, and it is the step that trips up a PS5-only household on the first evening - so do it before everyone is sitting down waiting. Our crossplay setup guide covers the same class of account friction across the other big cross-platform games.
Worth knowing for a mixed crew: this is one of the few games where the same purchase follows you between a console and a PC rather than needing two copies, which is why it also sits on the cross-buy page. If your crew is split between a PS5 and a PC, that page is the one that lists which other games do and do not do this.
Safer Seas: the mode that fixes the PvP problem, and what it costs you
If the thing stopping your group from buying this is “we do not want to be attacked”, there is a mode for that. PlayStation's page lists it plainly - explore the waves at your leisure in Safer Seas mode - and Rare's announcement of it described sailing solo or with a crew of up to three friends with no other player-controlled crews present in the world. That is a private session for your four people and nobody else: no rival ships, no boarding, no losing a cargo run to a sloop that appeared on the horizon.
The trade-off is progression. Safer Seas earns less than the standard High Seas mode and caps some reputation tracks, and we are deliberately not quoting a percentage or a level number here: Rare has revised those figures at least once since the mode launched and we could not confirm a current one against a first-party page on October 20, 2026. Read the in-game description before you commit a crew to it. The structural facts - your crew alone in the world, up to four of you, no PvP - are the ones that have not changed.
What a crew actually does on an evening
You pick a ship size, you sail somewhere, and the game gives you jobs: dig up a chest, deliver livestock, fight skeleton crews, raid a fort. None of it is hard; all of it requires two or three people doing different things at once, which is the reason it works as a group game and falls flat alone. The sailing itself is the content - the long stretches of nothing are where the conversation happens, and that is either exactly what your group wants on a Wednesday or completely intolerable.
Two honest cons beyond the PvP. One: there is no split-screen - none of the three listings carry a shared-screen flag, so four people in one room need four machines, which is the opposite of how couch co-op games work and worth knowing before you plan a games night around it. Two: Steam lists In-App Purchases, which in practice means a cosmetic store; nothing in it is required to play, but the shop is part of the experience now and a crew that hates that should know up front.
