Today, Rise of Piracy received a major early update focused on long-term development, performance, and stability rather than headline gameplay additions.
The Rise of Piracy patch 49 comes after five months of early access, and it includes new Steam integrations, interface updates, fresh content, and dozens of bug fixes. The centerpiece of the update is a large-scale project refactor, which the developer says involved a comprehensive audit of the game’s codebase.
Although most of the work is invisible to players, it is designed to improve development efficiency while delivering performance gains, better stability, and potentially resolving long-standing memory-related issues. Steam users also receive several new platform-specific features.
Experimental Steam Input support has been added, bringing native controller compatibility and laying the groundwork for improved Steam Deck support in future updates. Steam Rich Presence now displays player activity, while Steam Timeline integration automatically records major gameplay milestones.
Smaller UI improvements have also arrived ahead of a larger interface overhaul planned for next month. Work has already begun on new Ship Details (Glossary) and Faction Summary screens, which will eventually provide expanded information on fleets, settlements, buildings, wealth, and faction management.
Gameplay additions include Treasure Maps as potential rewards from sink missions and fleet battles, along with new fleet summary displays showing ships currently being towed. Additional scaffolding has also been implemented for future faction influence systems and settlement management features.
This Rise of Piracy update also includes extensive backend system reworks aimed at improving reliability throughout the campaign. According to the developer, these changes remove technical bottlenecks that previously slowed implementation of larger features planned for future updates.
Alongside these improvements, the patch fixes a wide range of issues affecting the following:
- Tutorial progression and lock-up issues
- User interface (UI) behavior and overlapping elements
- Settlement management calculations and upgrade costs
- Fleet spawning and crew assignment
- Ship pathfinding and spawning reliability
- Translation support on the main menu
- Camera positioning during sailing and island visits
- Tooltip persistence after closing menus
- Objective tracking and display
- Ship calculation and fleet limit errors
- Passive income and settlement wealth upgrades
- Various gameplay edge cases and stability issues
Event systems have also been rebuilt for greater reliability, while achievements are now turned off during tutorials except for the tutorial completion achievement. The developer thanked the community for its continued feedback through Discord and Steam, noting that player-submitted bug reports and save files have been instrumental in resolving issues that are difficult to reproduce internally.
They also celebrated the game nearing 500 Steam reviews and confirmed attendance at upcoming Irish game development events, including Nexus. The update represents one of the game’s largest technical overhauls since Rise of Piracy first entered early access, with the groundwork now in place for more substantial gameplay and UI additions in the months ahead.
The developer aims for a major patch every 2-3 months as it nears its Early Access release on PC. For more information on this and other ship simulation titles, like Ships at Sea and Seafarer: The Ship Sim, be sure to check back to Simulation Daily for updates.
