Free-to-play pirate island survival sandbox, Pirates, leaving Steam soon [UPDATE]

[UPDATE 03/02/23] Site reader K R pointed out that the announcement below has since been deleted from the game’s Steam page. Pirates remains available to play for free and its Creative Mode DLC is still available as of March 2nd. This is reportedly the second time that Witte’s Studio has announced that the game would be removed from Steam only to later delete the notice. Our original post from February 25th continues below.

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Developer Witte’s Studio announced on Friday that their free-to-play pirate island survival sandbox game, Pirates, will be leaving the Steam store soon. Unfortunately, no word on when that might be but as a free title you can claim it now and should be able to download it in the future. It’s uncertain if the multiplayer will be functional going forward or not.

I have long thought about how to continue with Pirates, with a new name (Pirates) and revision of the maps and a few minor things I wanted to bring fresh wind in.

Due to numerous incidents since the release a year ago, where I was already once close to take the game out of the store, I now no longer have the strength to continue to justify myself for this game. I am really sorry for the users who like the game to deliver such a news.

For this reason, I would like to distance myself from this game now. All users who already own this game can continue to use it!.

The game Pirates has reached 261,073 users who have it in their Steam accounts now in one year, of which 131,113 users have played the game. I wish you continued fun and a good time.

Steam Announcement – Februar 24, 2023

The game does have a paid Creative Mode DLC that apparently removes the requirements for gathering materials and allows access to unlimited items, clothing, and resources. While developer Flitzpiepe mentioned in a forum reply that they can’t put the DLC on sale  they do have plans to make it free in the future. After it’s gone you should still be able to retroactively claim and install it through SteamDB, but if you’re at all interested claim the game now.

Thanks to Serrated-banner9 for submitting the news, we’ll have a page up on the site later.