Is it possible to play Sea of Thieves on Mac?
Sea of Thieves is a pirate-themed cooperative multiplayer action-adventure computer game developed by Rare and published by Microsoft Studios. The game offers to plunge into the abyss of sea battles, missions, campaigns but mostly cooperate and fight together or against each other with pirate romance and paraphernalia. It is quite an advanced game in terms of graphics, however, modern Mac computers can run it on high settings. Unfortunately, Sea of Thieves is not directly compatible with MacOS. Using instructions on this page you can set up the game to run on any Mac and enjoy the process!
Play Sea of Thieves on Mac with Parallels
Sea of Thieves requires lots of PC resources, but if you have a powerful Mac computer (iMac, iMac Pro, or Mac Pro) Parallels Desktop can be a solution. This is software for Windows virtualization on Mac with the full support of DirectX and GPUs. It allows you to install Windows 10 on Mac with a couple of clicks and switch between MacOS and Windows instantly. You can run Windows just like on a regular PC, install Steam and enjoy the Sea of Thieves game on Mac.
Note: Recommended devices to run resource-demanding games: MacBook Pro (models with Intel processor, discrete graphics cards, and 16 GB of RAM or more), iMac (models with Intel processor, discrete graphics cards, and 16 GB of RAM or more), iMac Pro (all versions are suitable), Mac Pro (all versions are suitable). Parallels on Mac computers with M1 (M1 Pro, M1 Max) chips may not support recent games. Games that require DirectX 12 and later currently not supported by Parallels.
Play Sea of Thieves on Mac with cloud gaming services
If you have an old Mac, or it cannot satisfy Sea of Thieves game system requirements, there is an easy solution. Cloud gaming services provide you with sufficient cloud resources for a fixed fee. All you need is a browser or a small client program, and a good internet connection starting from 20 MBits/s. There are several great services (Xbox Cloud, Nvidia GeForce Now, Google Stadia, AirGPU), however, currently ONLY Xbox Cloud Gaming and AirGPU offers Sea of Thieves. You can play the game on any Mac computer (starting from MacOS 10.10) and even Android using Google Chrome or Safari browser!
Play Sea of Thieves on Mac with BootCamp
Note: Mac computers with new Apple Silicon (M1, M2, M3 Pro, or M1, M2, M3 Max) currently do not support BootCamp. In this case, please, use the options above to run Sea of Thieves on Mac
This method is simple but time-consuming. If your Mac meets the system requirements above, this is probably the best way to play Sea of Thieves for now. You need to set up a dual boot of Windows and Mac via BootCamp. BootCamp allows users to choose the system to work in on startup, however, you won’t be able to switch between systems like in Parallels. You will need to reboot your machine every time you switch from Mac to Windows and vice versa. Remember that Mac is just a computer, that uses common processors, RAM, disks, and other components. So you can install Windows on Mac by allocating disc space of a minimum of 64 Gb (to be able to run Windows and a couple of games). To set up Windows via BootCamp, please, do the following:
For OS X El Capitan 10.11 or later
Mention, that for MacOS versions prior to OS X El Capitan 10.11 you will need to create bootable Windows USB.
- Download Windows ISO file
- Open Boot Camp Assistant (Go to Applications > Utilities)
- Define the Windows partition size, choose downloaded Windows ISO file
- Format Windows partition and go through all Windows installation steps
- When Windows boots for the first time, follow on-screen instructions to install Boot Camp and Windows support software (drivers)