Recently a user by the name of Mi6 x NeRo asked a very simple question over on the official Sea of Thieves forums, what process did Rare go through to eventually come up with the name Sea of Thieve? Well, the post garnered some traction from fans in the community and eventually, Executive Producer Joe Neate stepped in to explain the answer.
“We spent about a year trying to figure out what to call the bloody thing,” commented Neate. “Honestly, it’s harder than you think especially when you’re used to calling it one thing for so long – i.e. Athena.”
“We tried multiple different approaches to this, from team suggestions on a whiteboard, to working with one of the marketing teams within Microsoft to source suggestions, and ended with a shortlist of five names. Sea of Thieves was my favourite from that list and we ran them all past the legal team and the other four were vetoed for various boring legal reasons and Sea of Thieves was the only one left so I was in a happy place. I would’ve fought for it whatever the results, but that made it that little bit easier.”
Neate also revealed some other names that were suggested early on including Kraken, Sea ++ (his personal favourite), The Rumming Man—which is definitely my favourite of the suggestions—and lastly, Awesome Roving Sea Encounters.
For more information, check out the original blog post here or the article by Rare Thief which delves deeper into the story, including the original codename, Athena.
Original Source: Rare Thief
Lewis is a games journalist, freelance gaming and consumer-tech journalist. They contributed 344 articles to ICXM between 2015–2017, focused on opinion pieces, game reviews, Windows and PC, and Xbox news: has since served as Editor-in-Chief at StealthOptional and Gaming Editor at MSPoweruser, with bylines at Gfinity Esports and FRVR.