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Why Sea of Thieves Temporarily Disabled Crouching and Disguises in Season 14

Rare’s Season 14 shutdown was temporary: hotfix 3.2.0.1 restored crouching, while disguises and other stealth features were addressed in later update notes.
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Rare temporarily disabled Sea of Thieves’ new crouching and disguise features after finding high-impact issues connected to them. The disruption was part of the Season 14 rollout, not a current breaking update: hotfix 3.2.0.1 restored crouching while disguises and several other stealth features remained disabled at that point, and later 3.2.1 notes documented disguise fixes.

Why Rare disabled the features

Rare said it had identified “some high-impact issues connected to crouching and disguises” and would temporarily disable the features while preparing a hotfix. The statement explained the decision as a response to player-impacting problems, but did not publish a bug count, outage duration, or a more detailed breakdown of the issues behind the initial shutdown. Rare’s Season 14 team update is the source for that rationale.

The accompanying hotfix notes show why these mechanics required careful testing: they addressed gameplay exploits and edge cases involving players passing through enemy threats, shooting through solid ship surfaces, grapple interactions that could fling players, and crouch-related cannon trajectories and fall damage. Rare did not say these examples were the sole cause of the original disablement.

What changed in hotfix 3.2.0.1

Rare’s 3.2.0.1 release notes said, “With this hotfix, crouching is once again available.” Crouching was described as a low stance that slows movement, makes players stealthier, hides their name, and helps conceal them from some nearby enemy threats. A crouched player can also duck shots and is braced against knockback.

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At this stage, Rare’s Known Issues list still marked disguises, traps, and hanging from ledges as temporarily disabled because of issues with potentially high player impact. So the hotfix restored crouching, but it did not bring every Season 14 stealth mechanic back at once.

What the later disguise updates show

Rare’s 3.2.1 release notes later included disguises and other stealth features in the November update, alongside fixes to how those mechanics worked. The changes included preventing players from disguising themselves while airborne, smoothing turning, hiding darts attached to players, and correcting how disguised players appeared to other players.

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That later update documents continued rollout and refinement. It does not, by itself, establish the exact date on which each temporarily disabled feature returned.

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Are disguises still disabled?

The answer depends on the date being discussed. In the 3.2.0.1 hotfix notes, disguises were still listed as temporarily disabled; later 3.2.1 notes document disguise mechanics and fixes. The official sources cited here do not provide a complete feature-by-feature inventory of their present-day status, so the Season 14 outage should not be treated as proof that disguises remain disabled now.

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This is a historical Season 14 incident. Rare’s official What’s New page lists Season 21 as dated 17 September 2026. Its currently crawled Known Issues listing mentions a DualSense feedback issue after sprinting or crouching, but that does not confirm the live availability of every Season 14 stealth feature.

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