Sea of Thieves temporarily yanks nearly all its big new stealth features following "significant issues"

Just days after the launch of Sea of Thieves’ stealth-focused Season 14, developer Rare has yanked nearly all its new features – including the ability to crouch and don disguises – acknowledging “significant issues” arising from their addition to the game.

Rare had already been forced to disable two of Season 14’s flagship new features – the ability to lay traps and hang from ledges – ahead of last week’s launch as a result of stability concerns and a “high player impact issue” discovered during a final round of testing. As such, its decision to now remove crouching and disguises means only a tiny fraction of Season 14’s announced features are currently available to players.

Speaking in a video update detailing the “drastic steps” earlier today, Sea of Thieves production director Drew Stevens explained the arrival of crouching had “introduced a number of knock-on effects to the wider experience”. More specifically, it had led to the return of a number of PvP exploits Rare has previously tried to stamp out, including the ability for players to switch weapons faster than intended and to control their movements while in the air after blasting from a cannon. Rare has also identified an invincibility exploit.

“We’re really unhappy about the quality of Season 14’s launch”, Stevens acknowledged in his video update, adding that Rare is “taking this situation very seriously”. He went on to explain the studio’s first priority is “stabilising” the player experience, and it’ll begin re-enabling features once it’s “confident they meet our quality bar”.