Now that Sea of Thieves is out on PS5, you might want to play with friends on other platforms by taking advantage of crossplay.
To help your crew get started on their swashbuckling adventure as soon as possible, we’ve quickly explained how to play Sea of Thieves crossplay below (spoilers, it’s activated by default!), along with briefly explaining how to add friends, and how to turn off crossplay in Sea of Thieves.
For more help with your high seas adventures, check out our pages on 18 nifty things Sea of Thieves doesn’t tell you, and gold and doubloon sources.
On this page:
Is Sea of Thieves crossplay?
Yes, Sea of Thieves is fully crossplay, meaning you can play with friends across PS5, PC, or Xbox consoles, no matter what platform you’re playing on.
How to play Sea of Thieves crossplay
Sea of Thieves is crossplay by default, so all you have to do is launch the game, add friends, then invite them to play – no matter what platform you’re all on! You just need to ensure you and your friends have linked, or signed-in to, a Microsoft account on Sea of Thieves, or you won’t be able to search for their gamertag and invite them.
We’ve got a full explainer on our how to add friends in Sea of Thieves page, but the quick summary is that your Xbox account needs to be friends with their Xbox account to invite them in-game, regardless of what platform you’re all playing on. You can use the Xbox app, website, or press the windows button + ‘G’ on PC or laptop to search for your friend’s gamertag and add them. Just make sure this is the same Microsoft account linked to Sea of Thieves.
Once you’re Xbox friends, you can then invite your friends through the Guild menu, or send them invites through the ‘My Crew’ menu before, or after, setting sail.
On the other hand, if you want to protect your solo sessions at sea and ensure you’re just playing with a one-pirate crew, you can toggle off ‘Allow Friends to Join Me’ from the ‘My Crew’ menu.
How to turn off crossplay in Sea of Thieves
Crossplay can’t be disabled on PC, but players on PS5 can choose to disable crossplay from the Matchmaking menu in Settings to only be matched with other PS5 players.
If you’re on Xbox, the only easy option to try and disable crossplay with PC players is to go to the exact same Matchmaking menu in Settings and toggle the ‘Prefer Console Players with Controllers’ option to ‘Yes’. However, as stated in the smallprint below, this is just a preference and is not guaranteed.
Alternatively, on Xbox, you can turn crossplay off completely from your console’s settings, but this method isn’t always guaranteed to work, and can lead to crashes while playing Sea of Thieves. So beware of doing this!
Still, if you’d like to try it, here’s how to turn off crossplay completely on Xbox consoles:
- Go to the ‘Settings’ menu of your Xbox, then select ‘General’, and ‘Online safety and family’.
- Select ‘Privacy and online safety’, then ‘Xbox Privacy’.
- Select the ‘Customise’ option from the list, then ‘View details and customise’, and ‘Communication and multiplayer’.
- Finally, select ‘Block’ under the ‘You can join cross-network play’ option to turn off Crossplay.
We recommend restarting your Xbox after turning Crossplay off to help it work the next time you launch Sea of Thieves.
Remember, this turns off Crossplay for all games on your Xbox console. So if you want to play with friends in another game who aren’t on Xbox, you will have to go back into this menu and toggle Crossplay back on.
Good luck to you and your crossplay crew in Sea of Thieves!
