Sea of Thieves

Sea of Thieves is Rare's shared-world pirate adventure, published by XboxPublisherXbox Game Studios (Microsoft)Xbox Game Studios is Microsoft's first-party publishing label. Halo Infinite is developed by Halo Studios (formerly 343 Industries, renamed 2024). Halo Infinite added Easy Anti-Cheat in 2024 in a non-kernel variant, after launching with only a server-side system.2 games in this family → Game Studios and released March 20, 2018. Built on Unreal Engine 4EngineUnreal Engine (Epic Games)Epic Games' Unreal Engine is the most widely used engine in big-budget PC games. Versions 4 and 5 power a substantial share of the modern competitive shooter market, including Valorant (UE4), Fortnite (UE5), PUBG (UE4), The Finals (UE5), and Delta Force (UE5).20 games in this family →, it puts crews into a single open ocean to sail, hunt treasure, and fight both the world and each other. It came to Steam in 2020 and to PlayStation 5 in April 2024, with full crossplay across PC, Xbox, and PS5.

Playing Sea of Thieves on PC since March 2024 means Easy Anti-Cheat's kernel driver loads with the game; the process is SoTGame.exe. If you hit an Easy Anti-Cheat not installed error or an anti-cheat kick, the usual cause is a missing EACAnti-cheatEasy Anti-Cheat (EAC)Easy Anti-Cheat is one of the most widely deployed kernel anti-cheats in PC gaming. Founded by Finnish company Kamu in 2006, acquired by Epic Games in 2018, and bundled with Epic Online Services. The kernel driver loads while a protected game is running. User-mode daemons EasyAntiCheat.exe and EasyAntiCheat_EOS.exe are catalogued in the Field Guide's processes section.18 games in this family → install or an incompatible driver on the system, so repair EAC rather than disabling it. Crossplay can be filtered by input method, controller versus mouse and keyboard, which is the lever players use when they are worried about input-based advantages.

For its first six years Sea of Thieves shipped no client-side anti-cheat, relying on Rare's own server-side detection and manual enforcement. That changed on March 14, 2024, just before the PlayStation 5 launch, when Rare added Easy Anti-Cheat. On Windows, EAC runs a kernel-mode driver that loads with the game and unloads when it closes; the game will not start without it. The shipping process is SoTGame.exe, under an Athena folder (the game's internal codename), with the binary in a Win64 folder on Steam and a UWP64 folder in the Microsoft Store build. The easyanticheat.exeProcesseasyanticheat.exeEasy Anti-Cheat user-mode serviceOpen plate → daemon is catalogued in the Field Guide's processes section.

Because Sea of Thieves is a shared world where any crew can attack any other, a cheater does not just spoil their own run, they degrade the real-time sessions of everyone sharing that ocean, which is why anti-cheat matters here even though it is not a ranked competitive shooter. The game had a persistent population using sight and aim cheats, and Rare answered with steady enforcement: its 2023 Fair Play Update reported thousands of report-driven terminations plus thousands more from internal detection over a year, and it later moved to a points-based system where confirmed cheating triggers a permanent ban. The game's in-ship brig is a separate thing worth not confusing with that: a crew can vote a disruptive player into it, which is a social tool, not the anti-cheat ban path. Sources include Pure Xbox, TechRaptor, TrueAchievements, and Rare's own Fair Play posts.