With multiplayer pirate adventure game Sea of Thieves about to launch on PlayStation 5, Microsoft has announced plans to take the game offline for server maintenance. Sea of Thieves will go offline for maintenance at 10am BST UK time on the morning of April 25. According to Microsoft, the server maintenance is for the Xbox and PC versions, and shouldn’t intefere with the PS5 launch at 2pm BST. This means the game should be back online at around midday at the latest. The server downtime will coincide with the release of a new update, which will also be available for PS5 users when the servers go online.

The news was announced by Microsoft on X: “Attention, pirates! The Sea of Thieves servers will be taken offline for necessary maintenance tomorrow, April 25th, from around 9am UTC. Please plan your Voyages accordingly.

“This planned maintenance should not impact PlayStation 5 Early Access, which is scheduled to begin at 1pm UTC/6am PT/9am ET on April 25th.”

Sea of Thieves is the last of four Xbox games to go multiplatform, following the release of Pentiment, Hi-Fi Rush and Grounded.

PS5 users hoping to play the game via early access on April 25 will need to pre-order the Premium Edition, which comes with five days of early access.

Priced at £59.99, the Premium Edition also comes with a Diabolical Dog Pet, as well as the Season 12 Plunder Pass, the Dark Warsmith Set and Costume, plus various cosmetics and items.

To ensure you can start playing pretty much the minute it goes live, pre-order customers can actually pre-load the game ahead of launch.

If you haven’t pre-ordered the game, then unfortunately you won’t be able to start playing until April 30.

While this means Standard and Deluxe Edition customers won’t be able to play this weekend, the good news is that April 30 is the same day Season 12 launches.