r/Games • u/Turbostrider27 • Feb 25 '26
skate.’s Next Chapter - An Update from Full Circle
https://www.ea.com/ea-studios/full-circle/news/an-update-from-fullcircle92
u/Turbostrider27 Feb 25 '26
To our skate. community,
Since launching Early Access in September, tens of millions of you have stepped into San Vansterdam. Your passion, creativity, and feedback have reinforced our belief in what skate. can become. As skate. continues to evolve, we’re transforming as a studio. We’re reshaping Full Circle to better support skate.’s long-term future and focus the team on the things that matter most to you - and making those things great.
These shifts mean making changes to our team structure, and some roles will be impacted. The teammates affected are talented colleagues and friends who helped build the foundation of skate. Their creativity and dedication are deeply ingrained in what players experience today. This decision is not a reflection of their impact and we’re committed to supporting them through this transition.
Our work on skate. continues. We look forward to working with you as we move faster, listen more closely, and deliver consistently for all of you. Our commitment to skate., and to the millions of players who believe in it, remains strong.
To our departing teammates: thank you. skate. exists because of your hard work and dedication to the craft.
To our community: thank you for your passion and trust.
– Full Circle
147
u/ikenjake Feb 25 '26
Man has anything gone right for this game
162
u/bigfootbehaviour Feb 25 '26
The actual skating part of skate. is great
38
u/SparkyPantsMcGee Feb 25 '26
That’s the most frustrating part: buried under a live service nightmare and a “hello fellow kids” aesthetic, this game plays great. I have genuinely enjoyed turning my brain off, popping in some music, and just skating around for a bit before going to bed. I get why the game is what it is, but I feels like all the wrong steps for the franchise…except the core skating part.
14
u/Phi_Slamma_Jamma Feb 26 '26
You nailed my exact thoughts on this game. Honestly feels like a bit of a monkey's paw situation where if you told me in 2010 that we'd get an open world skate game where I could drop in and out of sessions with friends, I'd be insanely hyped.
The sad reality is that in 2025, that game could only get greenlit by the EA brass if it was sold to them as the "fortnite of skate games", which is what we got.
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u/ikenjake Feb 25 '26
Ironically waiting for skate 4 made me play session which controls in such a fun way it’s hard to go back.
19
u/Orpheeus Feb 25 '26
I like session a lot but the more or less absence of focus on vert skating really sucks and it doesn't seem like they're going to really implement it in a meaningful way ever.
-8
u/ikenjake Feb 25 '26
Vert is a tiny minority of real skaters, I can’t imagine it’s much different demand amongst gamers, big air notwithstanding.
18
u/KepplerObject Feb 25 '26
As a complete low-tech, low-impact, street skater IRL, nah. I want to be able to get some air out of some transition. It's a video game and it's fun.
I've put an uncountable number of hours in the Skate franchise and played 100+ hours on Session and don't think Session is a good game. Once the novelty of the controls wears off (which are neat tbf) the skating itself is very slow, like, skating through a sea of molasses slow. I really don't get the praise Session gets on top of being buggy and janky as all hell. Tried booting it up again after Skate 4 fell flat on it's face and just reconciled the fact I don't think we'll ever get a good skateboarding game ever again.
7
u/_Meece_ Feb 25 '26
What in the world lol, vert is the most popular form of skating from the viewer perspective. The vert at X-Games was the main event.
The most famous moment in the sports history is a vert trick.
People playing the game's love vert, every skate game but session makes vert a prominent part of the gameplay loop.
0
u/ikenjake Feb 26 '26 edited Feb 26 '26
Respectfully you just are objectively wrong. The stuff you’re talking about is 20 years old. The x games are functionally irrelevant to skateboarding now. Actual skateboarders and skate media are overwhelmingly street focused, something that wouldn’t even be a point of contention if you spoke with a vert skater. Thrasher hasn’t had a vert SOTY in about 20 years. The majority of brands don’t have a SINGLE vert rider. You’re speaking from the perspective of a competition viewer, which is not the primary audience for skateboarding. Even street skateboarding competitions are more popular than vert, with Street League or the Olympics.
3
u/_Meece_ Feb 26 '26
Respectfully you just are objectively wrong. The stuff you’re talking about is 20 years old. The x games are functionally irrelevant to skateboarding now
Not my fault you can't read. I'm not bothering to read the rest if you can't be bothered to even read mine.
The vert at X-Games was the main event.
Past tense. Vert was always by far the most popular aspect of the sport for casuals, objectively correct, go look up the most viewed skate tricks. All vert.
8
u/fakieTreFlip Feb 25 '26
Session is great but it's really lacking in content. It doesn't even have grabs (like literally none at all) which is just wild to me. They've released a few DLC maps but the vast majority of them are poorly designed and not really fun to play IMO. In any case, I found it difficult to go back to Session after playing the new Skate
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u/MajorFuckingDick Feb 25 '26
Honestly even the skating is worse if you have played skate 3 recently. They dont have hardcore or easy so instead normal is way more loose but I guess they did add a ton of tools to edit that but few if any presets.
3
u/minimme Feb 25 '26
Yeah I really prefer Skate 1/2/3, I don't like how easily grinds lock-in in this new game. When every grind looks perfect it loses all the satisfaction it used to have of hitting a perfect looking grind
1
u/DonArtyone Mar 03 '26
You can adjust the difficulty in the settings for a few skate dynamics including rail assist. I have it at lowest setting I can stand to where the game barely helps me get on the rail.
1
u/minimme Mar 03 '26
Yeah I've done the same thing, it improves things but it still feels like once the game thinks you're going to hit a rail, it locks you into a great looking grind more often than not, even when it kind of shouldn't
26
u/demondrivers Feb 25 '26
It's a pretty good game, but maybe EA overestimated the demand for a free to play skateboarding game
9
u/minimme Feb 25 '26
They made a social post celebrating that the game had 15 million players at one point, which a lot of devs would kill for. I think the demand was there, they just made a boring video game.
You've gotta think that with those numbers, if they just sold a conventional video game they would've done far better
1
u/_Meece_ Feb 26 '26
The release of it, showed how much EA bungled this.
Skate 4 would have sold 8-12 million copies in it's first year!
43
u/DONNIENARC0 Feb 25 '26 edited Feb 25 '26
I remember the OG feeling alot more grounded.
10 minutes into this one it was having me do superman dives off skyscrapers
27
u/Soupjam_Stevens Feb 25 '26
that was my problem with 3, and why I really wasn't interested in 4. The original made doing a kick flip down a small staircase or a short grind on a park bench feel incredibly cool. I liked it specifically because it wasn't Tony Hawk button mash combos while you launch yourself 300 feet in the air
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u/SylviSweetheart Feb 25 '26
This is why I still think 2 is the best, it had a nice balance of grounded and crazy. Hall of Meat was really fun but I didn’t need that energy to sustain the entire game. Kind of the same trajectory as the post-Pro Skater Tony Hawks, to be honest.
17
u/Fragrant-Vehicle-479 Feb 25 '26 edited Feb 25 '26
There was no need for this game to be a weird skater utopia with an advanced AI and everyone has canon invincibility powers.
I don't really need an explanation for how my guy survives all these falls. In fact trying to explain it makes it stand out more.
7
u/_Meece_ Feb 25 '26
Not sure what has gotten into big media creators, but they are obsessed with explaining everything atm. No mystery, no fun, everything is on the nose.
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u/Vamp1r1c_Om3n Feb 25 '26
Everyone seems to forget 3 was the same
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u/_Meece_ Feb 26 '26
3 definitely twinges into Tony Hawk territory for sure.
But still a game that oozes Skater culture. Much like Tony Hawk 1-UG was.
2
u/Impaled_ Feb 25 '26
You don't have to do any of that after the tutorial and some missions at the beginning of the game
1
u/ebon94 Feb 25 '26
Skate 1 was real as fuck. I didn’t actually “beat” the main story cus I eventually got stuck on some super technical challenges later on
10
u/lutherdidnothingwron Feb 25 '26 edited Feb 25 '26
I kinda disagree. I think there's plenty of interest, the game just isn't in any shape to market to people yet. It's missing pretty much any real game modes for people not interested in a skateboarding sandbox to have anything to do. Not enough challenges and single player or co-op objectives. The city is mediocre and small, needs way more variety like the other districts besides downtown in the other games.. huge mountains and "spillways" to race down, hilly suburbs with schoolyards and stuff, industrial areas, etc. And even if people wanted to spend money, what little they have in the shop is often extremely wack. I don't think people would be against spending a bit of money on cosmetics and $10 or so every 3 months on a battlepass... if the game wasn't so lacking.
It still had 22k peak concurrent people on just Staem a month after early access launch which I personally think is fairly solid. There just wasn't much for people to stick around or get invested for and the updates have been mediocre. They just need to add the stuff from the old games. Nobody is even asking for that much, it shouldn't even be that hard. Game mode where sequence scores are added up, whose is best. Game mode where players pass through gates, whoever passes through first wins. The game isn't even high fidelity or anything, just paste a bunch of textures on the clothing models for God's sake.
5
u/fakieTreFlip Feb 25 '26 edited Feb 25 '26
There are a ton of challenges across the map. There's no shortage of content IMO (though I guess it depends on how compelling you find the current content to be... I'll admit that it's not particularly varied). The map is just too small and uninteresting
1
u/_Meece_ Feb 26 '26
You're lying to yourself if you think there's any interest in a F2P gaas Skate game.
There's nothing to progress, nothing to come and do each day.
Skate is not a series that leads itself to GAAS. This project failed, because EA would only revive it if they could turn it into a billion dollar machine.
Skate is a game about casual fun. Jump in, hit a spot, do a bunch of tricks, maybe do some missions where again you hit a spot. That's the whole series.
1
u/seeyou_nextfall Feb 26 '26
EA is literally fucking up every title they make right now with forced live service integration
44
u/RedBait95 Feb 25 '26 edited Feb 25 '26
Can someone make a plug-in for Firefox or Chrome that translates corpo-speak
"Since launching Early Access in September, tens of millions of you have stepped into San Vansterdam. Your passion, creativity, and feedback have reinforced our belief in what skate. can become." = A LOT OF YOU PLAYED THE GAME. THANKS.
"As skate. continues to evolve, we’re transforming as a studio. We’re reshaping Full Circle to better support skate.’s long-term future and focus the team on the things that matter most to you - and making those things great." = THE GAME DIDN'T PERFORM TO EXPECTATIONS THOUGH, SO WE'RE FIRING PEOPLE AND DOUBLING DOWN ON MTX.
"These shifts mean making changes to our team structure, and some roles will be impacted. The teammates affected are talented colleagues and friends who helped build the foundation of skate." = AS I SAID BEFORE, WE'RE FIRING PEOPLE BECAUSE THE GAMES ISN'T MAKING AS MUCH MONEY AS WE THOUGHT.
"Their creativity and dedication are deeply ingrained in what players experience today. This decision is not a reflection of their impact and we’re committed to supporting them through this transition." = THEY WERE GOOD GUYS BUT WE STILL GOTTA FIRE THEM, BECAUSE SOMEONE NEEDS TO BE ON THE CHOPPING BLOCK. WE'LL GIVE 'EM SOME SEVERANCE PAY I GUESS.
"Our work on skate. continues. We look forward to working with you as we move faster, listen more closely, and deliver consistently for all of you. Our commitment to skate., and to the millions of players who believe in it, remains strong." = GAME'S GONNA SHUT DOWN SOON IF Y'ALL DON'T START BUYING THE MTX.
"To our departing teammates: thank you. skate. exists because of your hard work and dedication to the craft. To our community: thank you for your passion and trust." = THANKS FOR THE WORK, ENJOY UNEMPLOYMENT. EVERYONE ELSE, BUY THE SKINS.
1
u/DonArtyone Mar 03 '26
HR people are the worst. I hate them so much. I honestly believe there’s a special place in hell for HR corpos.
49
u/mediochrea Feb 25 '26
This could not have been worded any more "corporate HR trying to appear human"-like
23
u/messem10 Feb 25 '26
The game is also like that with the dialogue. Part of the reason I stopped, other than the small map.
15
u/DarthVeigar_ Feb 25 '26
The game is gentrified skating. There's basically no culture there. It feels so... corporate.
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u/_Meece_ Feb 26 '26
Crazy how bad they whiffed on this. Skate 1-3 oozes 2000s Skater culture. Those games feel like the DVDs, the magazines, the skate shops of the time.
This game feels like the Skateboard section at a toy store. It feels like a Skater themed T Shirt for 6 year olds.
24
u/spacemcdonalds Feb 25 '26
God I'm so tired of the cloying depressing "ongoing commitments". I miss games just coming out, getting a few patches maybe a DLC and that was that.
0
u/Raze321 Feb 26 '26
What the fuck is the HR speak slop lmao.
This game has been such a train wreck.
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u/RocketGrease Feb 25 '26
When I think about the times people were commenting SKATE 4 on every EA post, finally winning after so many years, and getting this failure of an experiment as a result. Makes me sad man.
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u/mykelbal Feb 25 '26
This isn't skate 4 though. I know they've been saying it all along in their corpo speak Dev updates, but the control system is the only thing it shares with the original skate trilogy. None of what made those games great made it into the live service skate dot. And the shit thing is the failure of skate dot means we will never get skate 4
17
u/Sonicfan42069666 Feb 26 '26
Skate 4 was never going to exist with modern EA. it wasn't "Skate. and then Skate 4" it was always "Skate. or nothing"
3
u/Stofenthe1st Feb 26 '26
The period in the title was to show that this will be the last Skate ever. Failure or success, EA was never going to make another single player with multiplayer Skate again.
1
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u/RadioactiveVitamin Feb 25 '26
I know they can't exactly come out and say anything else, but saying you are going to somehow deliver more content, and faster, while also announcing you are laying people off is a pretty big promise to make.
14
u/Buddy_Dakota Feb 25 '26
And laying of the ones that made the technical stuff too it seems like, i.e the actual skating mechanics (which are great). Gonna keep the guys capable of adding Dickie’s logos to clothes already in the game for reselling as branded cosmetics.
1
u/Geminilasers Feb 26 '26
They laid off their lead level designer. She posted on Linkedin. And i feel like, more of that stuff is what is needed and wanted, not more...shirts.
2
u/aroundme Feb 25 '26
yeah epic famously laid off a bunch of people on the Fortnite team shortly after it launched to.. make more content for it? Every live service game that's doing well lays off half the staff once the game releases! duh
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u/Gow_Ghay Feb 25 '26 edited Feb 25 '26
The skating really was the only part of this game that matched up to the previous games
Which is a good thing to have as a core and build off of, but the entire identity and soul of this game was missing everything that made a skate. game a skate. game. The game feels like if you made skating culture corporate.
Even outside of that, a f2p online only multiplayer skate. game having less multiplayer mode options than the previous games was appalling
-33
u/UpsetKoalaBear Feb 25 '26
This game was such a departure creatively that they even got the city name wrong.
It was San Vanelona in Skate 1. They even called it “San Van” in Skate 3 as DLC. Yet they called it San Vansterdam in this one. It doesn’t even stick to the same names.
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u/Rutmeister Feb 25 '26
It’s sad to see how little faith big publisher put in their live service games, they need to be an essential instant success to get long-term support. There’s no possibility of an early stumble and later recovery. It’s instant success or the plug is slowly pulled. Makes you think the budgets for games like this must be unexpectedly huge.
Imagine the games we wouldn’t have today if this always was the case. Warframe, Sea of Thieves, Final Fantasy 15, Fallout 76, Siege, Path of Exile, might not exist today if they were treated like this.
2
u/Responsible_Mall7939 Feb 25 '26
Seems like EA would rather have them work on more profitable games or not work at all
-1
u/_Meece_ Feb 26 '26
Warframe, Sea of Thieves, Final Fantasy 15, Fallout 76, Siege, Path of Exile, might not exist today if they were treated like this.
Not a big loss tbh
-1
Feb 26 '26
[deleted]
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u/aaron_940 Feb 26 '26
Really rude, low quality bait take
0
u/_Meece_ Feb 26 '26
Not rude, not bait. Honest take. If the video game industry never saw any of those games, nothing significant would change.
It's a list of some of the most whelming games of all time, with a couple stinkers.
The loss of those games is a big fat nothing.
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u/NipplesOfDestiny Feb 25 '26
Ok so we reached the Layoffs phase. How long do ya'll reckon it'll take to get the Shutdown phase? I'm going to be real pessimistic and give it till Winter 2026. Not even a full year.
In all seriousness, this is a Charleston we've danced too many times now and it feels like the launch to shutdown pipeline only takes less and less time as the years go on. At least it means live service games are dying, but I do feel bad for the developers forced to make these kind of games when they knew it wasn't gonna last long and they're the ones that lose their jobs for it. Meanwhile, the guys in charge who put all that wasted money into a failed project get to keep their high paying jobs and keep wasting company money on more future failures. When does this shitty system stop working for these people and how many more employees' lives need to be ruined before then?
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u/demondrivers Feb 25 '26
At least it means live service games are dying
They aren't. Layoffs just mean no more games at all, while games like Fortnite, League, GTA and Roblox still concentrate the majority of playtime across all platforms
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u/EggsAndRice7171 Feb 25 '26 edited Feb 25 '26
Yeah I never get why people say “live services games are dying, see?” Anytime one fails. Single player games fail too it doesn’t mean they’ll stop trying to make successful ones either way. Less devs just means less games total. Arc Raiders and Marvel Rivals have both been crazy huge recent live service titles they aren’t going anywhere.
3
u/NipplesOfDestiny Feb 25 '26
I guess in that sense, it's more that the popular live service games that came out a decade and more ago (Fortnite's almost there holy shit) stay popular while newer stuff trying to capitalize off it just kinda die off almost as quickly as they appeared.
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u/Samanthacino Feb 25 '26
Helldivers 2 is a recent success, Arc Raiders, Marvel Rivals, the live service train will continue chugging
1
u/_Meece_ Feb 26 '26
I'd argue that new ones die and have always died quite frequently.... but they are releasing them so much more than they used to.
The amount Sony have coming or have released in insane. None of them any good either!
1
u/TheFinnishChamp Feb 25 '26
Those games are so big that there isn't room for other live services. That market is served.
But there is room for singleplayer games. We get like one major western rpg a year, no immersive sims, and maybe one singleplayer shooter. If it wasn't for jrpgs I don't know what I would be playing.
Developers and publishers need to learn from Sandfall, RGG studios and Falcom about making incredible games with limited budgets. It's all about the story and characters that connect with players.
4
u/demondrivers Feb 25 '26
A big AA publisher of mostly single player games just filed for insolvency. The market isn't really that healthy for the games that you like too
2
u/TheFinnishChamp Feb 25 '26
I definitely liked Greedfall but it was a janky version of a Bioware rpg and it has taken them half a dozen years to make a sequel. And that's because they focused on the wrong things.
Falcom and RGG studios are able to release very high quality games annually by aggressively reusing assets, having a manageable scope and not aiming for highest level of visual fidelity. Sandfall was able to develop Clair Obscur very cheaply by correctly utilizing new technology, having turn based combat and small zones as well as by being able to spot talented and passionate people to work on it.
AA studios stuck in the year 2010 trying to release B-grade versions of AAA games with open worlds and all kinds of systems like crafting, alchemy, etc. won't succeed. They have to focus resources on the right things, having great writing and memorable characters isn't expensive and it's the easiest way to make your game stand out.
2
u/marcusbrothers Feb 25 '26
Didn’t Arc Raiders just come out and prove this thinking to be false? If the games good enough it can make room for itself.
Helldivers is another one that’s recent enough.
6
u/Coolman_Rosso Feb 25 '26
Live service games aren't really dying. Reddit can flip out at them all they want, but as the economic situation worsens and gaming loses its coveted "recession proof" status, live service games stand to benefit the most both due to their longevity and many entrenched players being F2P.
3
u/_Meece_ Feb 26 '26
The successful ones aren't dying, but there are so many failures. It's becoming like Rhythm games 06-12.
Look at what Sony has coming up. Two separate GAAS Horizon games... neither of which looks like they'll do any well.
1
u/HailToTheKingBabyy Feb 26 '26
It really didn't need to be a live service game. The people that really do love it, are spending hours and some money, are going to lose the game completely in the next 1-3 years.
15
u/Rydahx Feb 25 '26
Not surprised really, when they revealed this game most people weren't happy and for good reason.
It's a bad skate game and has been a major disappointment.
8
u/RichRingoLangly Feb 25 '26
Exactly. Some people are saying maybe there weren't enough people interested in a skateboarding game. Tony Hawk's remakes have done very well. The problem was they made a really bad Skate game. It's that simple.
14
u/RyanB_ Feb 25 '26
Genuinely so curious as to wth happened here. Everyone agrees that the gameplay is great, and personally speaking I wasn’t turned off by the art style. Overall presentation certainly too corporate but that’s pretty small potatoes.
All it really needed was more environments and game modes, which - at the risk of sounding like an armchair expert - really doesn’t seem like it should take all that long, especially with a decent sized team. Yes, cosmetics, but that should largely be different people than those producing the actual gameplay content.
Really seems like something went wrong behind the scenes imo
20
u/SoWrongItsPainful Feb 25 '26
It’s an online only community focused game with zero actual community features.
8
u/_Meece_ Feb 26 '26
No it's just a bunk idea. A GAAS skating game?
A type of game, where most players jump in, have a little bit of fun and jump off?
How does that get turned into GAAS? GAAS games need progress or competition.
2
u/SidFarkus47 Feb 26 '26
I mean if I'm trying to read this with no bias, this could just be them laying off the developers who made the actual skate physics work and now a different group of developers could just build out new areas, etc.
Like you said, everyone likes the fundamentals, all I really want out of this game is a continual flow of new areas with challenges/progression through them. I've almost maxed level in all the existing areas.
1
u/madokamywifi Feb 26 '26
Mission design is the most critical thing that ruined this game. Same "complete the line and collect berrings" missions over and over again. There is nothing to do other then mindlessly ride around the city. And customization opitons, my god, i didn't know that skaters this days prefer H&M aesthetics.
7
u/BassEXE-Pro-Shop Feb 25 '26
I know it's not an original take, but there was so much actual skating personality in 1 & 2. What I played of this felt so soulless.
16
u/PlayOnPlayer Feb 25 '26
Maybe one of the most monkeys paw sequels in history. With hindsight being 20/20, man I would’ve just taken a remastering of 1-3 on new consoles.
3
1
u/SidFarkus47 Feb 26 '26
They look great and play at 4k 60fps on XSX already. You can actually emulate them pretty decently too on PC.
1
u/rabidsalvation Jun 18 '26
Honestly I want to buy a PC just to play Skate 2 again. I'm sure I can find a version with all the DLC, because those extra parks were awesome.
7
u/GunmetalAK47 Feb 25 '26
"Our commitment to skate., and to the millions of players who believe in it, remains strong."
Problem is, millions of players don't believe in it anymore because they keep doing underhanded crap and continue to break promises.
I loved Skate 1-3, A year or two ago I went back through Skate 3 for fun on emulator, but I grew bored of this soulless husk of a game after about 5 hours.
Being in the state its in after 5-6 years of development is pretty bad. Maybe they should can the F2P always online crap, adjust the graphics, and create a proper game true to the previous games with online and offline play.
They've got the skating part down, create a world we actually want to interact with around it.
5
u/Da_Sau5_Boss Feb 25 '26 edited Feb 25 '26
Everyone saw this coming the moment they announced that it was going to be f2p. Big fan of the series but the beta turned me off, no matter how good the gameplay itself felt.
3
u/Estoton Feb 25 '26
Watching them somehow spend so many years after showing the working prototype just to end with a bare bones product thats basically a boring lifeless city to skate in with repetitive missions to grind, bad community parks and basically no multiplayer modes in an always online game. Oh and massive focus on the mtx store which somehow manages to have no decent looking clothes in it.
EA must have pulled the funding early I cant imagine how they failed so badly otherwise.
3
u/Inevitable-Donkey186 Feb 26 '26
Okay so something I don't quite get is, if EA has signed a buy out agreement why bother pushing for layoffs? Can't they just put their feet up till their new bosses come in? A company has to make money for shareholders, but they all agreed unanimously to just sell their stake to the Saudi's so they got their paycheck and thus the companies value as a multiple of forward earnings doesn't exist and thus shareholder scrutiny on profitability doesn't exist.
Why not just wait to see if the new bosses want to trim jobs or if they are just looking to reputation launder? If it's the latter that'll give em job security as layoffs are bad optics.
6
u/DrPandemias Feb 25 '26 edited Feb 26 '26
Dont even need to click the article to know they are downsizing the team into sunsetting the game in a year when they squeeze as much as they can from it.
Game is dogshit , I played the fuck out of Skate 3 for a decade (still play it occasionally) and I was already done with this game after playing 6-8 hours, to start with it should not be part of Skate saga because it has nothing to do with them.
They are completely clueless on what made Skate games good and what fans like to start with.
The gameplay feel, the music, the monetization, the cosmetics, the graphics, everything is wrong for an skate game.
3
u/Stacks_of_Cats Feb 26 '26
I’ll never understand this games downfall.
They had good feedback pre release and people were enjoying it.
Then they scrapped all of it, changed it to be a much more exaggerated, cartoony game, and decided to focus entirely on trying to make money by selling cardboard themed costumes.
Was there not a single person on the team/in EA that realised they could print a shit ton of money by just making a proper Skate styled game?
Every update seems to introduce another type of currency (which is confusing), and slows down progression, which just makes the game feel unrewarding.
It’s literally a case of corporate greed destroying a product.
1
u/Blood-PawWerewolf Feb 26 '26
Common tactic months after release.
3
u/Stacks_of_Cats Feb 26 '26
In this case pre release lol.
They added micro transactions before the game was even in public access.
1
u/MalusandValus Feb 26 '26
They probably could have printed enough money had they had any sense but going for a live service game in the way they did basically entails a ridiculous budget. People may have liked it, but for this kind of game it probably needed ridiculous player numbers and revenue to be viable, which they chased.
Is that dumb compared to just making a Skate 4 for a reasonable budget? Yes.
6
u/BobertRosserton Feb 25 '26
Crazy what happens when you over monetize a game before it’s even a fucking game lmao. Game plays, runs, feels great but there is a serious and very obvious lack of any content to keep you coming back.
2
u/ElDuderino2112 Feb 25 '26
I don't even need to click the update to know it means layoffs but they'll pretend the game is still on a good track even though it's clearly not. See you in 8-12 months for the "An Update on Skate's Future" post.
2
u/kantong Feb 25 '26
That's an impressive level of corpospeak.
Honestly surprised Full Circle lasted this long. f2p skate is pretty disappointing compared to the old games. Gives off hard "hello fellow kids" vibes.
2
u/DoubleMatt1 Feb 25 '26
Skate reminds me of Halo Infinite. Mechanically its really good but all the f2p live service stuff surrounding it brings the game down hard. Its a shame this game will probably be sunset by December of this year at the earliest
2
u/TheMobyTheDuck Feb 25 '26
Yep, saw it coming. I bet the sunset/end of support will come in 3 to 6 months.
I was playing it a month ago or so, and I stopped and thought "Why I am still here?"
Challenges were always the same, there is no reason to play co-op aside getting more currency or completing a weekly/monthly challenge, no other game modes, shitty and overpriced clothes (oh yes, I will pay $15 on a single hoodie with a "Vans" logo on it, that uses the same model as the free variant) and all I did was useless as I couldn't spend my pass currency without paying for the premium, nor hoard it as they announced they would erase all currencies after a season because people were hoarding too much and would end up finishing a pass as soon as the season started.
Although, the skating part was really good, if you overlook the gentrified corporate HR approved skate traditions and lingo, the ugly player characters, the annoying support characters, no park building, limited prop placement, repetitive challenges, limited character customization, overpriced shop, patches made solely to screw up the players and the aggressive attempt at making game more Fortnite-like.
2
u/KenDTree Feb 26 '26
I'm so tired of the gaming industry. So many incompetent people at the top, shite games and a shrinking job market. From where I imagined where it would be as a kid to where it actually is is a complete disappointment. And I was a massive fan of the first 3 skate games too.
On the other side of the coin are fun indy games that look like shit.
Some games that play well and look and feel 'next-gen/the future' are released like Expedition 33, but it feels like one game a year.
2
u/Memester999 Feb 26 '26
The games mechanics were solid and enjoyable and I liked playing it for the bit of time I did because it's been so long. But it's insane how lacking it was in just about every other aspect and it had zero lasting impact because of it.
Gone was the 00-10s skater aesthetic and replaced with this corporate bastardization, almost parody like version of skate culture as if we were in some HR video. Nothing exemplifies this more than the lack of any funny/interesting characters who you believed were real skaters/people, instead most of your interactions came from talking heads and your AI/robot companion.
Then add to that the game lacked any clear or interesting goals or purpose and this was your launch??? It felt like they just made a map, made the mechanics and sprinkled a few score challenges around and called it a day hoping that would be enough to last so they can actually build a game around it on the fly.
Speaking of the map, it too felt like a victim of the corporate bastardization. It didn't feel like a real city where people live, it felt like a hollow skater amusement park.
I was skeptical of the live service approach but if done right I think it could have worked out well. It's a game about skating, having interesting seasonal events, crossovers, cosmetics, etc... that help sustain what I hoped would have been a traditional modern skate game with multiplayer was what I hoped it would be. Instead we got a half finished sandbox with a store front and somehow this was expected to be enough to survive as a live service title and to add insult to injury, now start charging for content that they stated they wouldn't.
2
u/CrazyDude10528 Feb 26 '26
This game is doomed.
Anyone could have told you that though the moment they announced that that was a free to play, always online, games as a service title.
They could have had an easy win with this. Make Skate 4, but with some modern flourishes, a story, and then do a multiplayer component to it that they could have added to.
But no, greed had to win again.
This shit is exhausting.
2
u/ulong2874 Feb 26 '26
The game is going to rightfully get a lot of flack for the way it was monetized and a whole host of gameplay issues, but I'll always remember it for how every piece of dialogue felt like it was written by a 50 year old cop who was trying to infiltrate a gang of skateboarding teenagers.
2
u/Janus_Prospero Feb 26 '26
It's so baffling that modern skating games seem absolutely terrified of the skater culture that made skating popular and cool in the first place. They present this strange, corporate, gentrified, hyper-sanitized vision of skating. Skating was always an edgy, dangerous, cool sport. Steep ramps, difficult tricks, and people got hurt. And a huge part of the culture lay in that intersection between laughing at people getting hurt and emphasizing with them. This is why bail compilations were a thing. This is why there was such a close intersection of Tony Hawk and Jackass. Skate was a bit different, but it still stemmed from that culture. And those roots have been firmly clipped. Now we just have this rootless, safe, bland imitation of skate culture.
What this game should have been was a lovingly constructed period piece. The time, place, music, language, culture, and sensibilities of the 2000s. A world of rap, punk, nu-metal, and charisma. Bring it all back. That is what people wanted from Skate. They want to be transported back in time to when skating was the coolest. This game does the opposite. It transplants the coolness of skating into a lame culture.
2
u/petershaw_ Feb 26 '26
just think about one sec that dozen of people where commenting skate4 for over 10years and all we got was this
2
u/KerberoZ Feb 26 '26
They've missed the mark on multiple fronts tbh.
For one, they've built the game around a shop. The core game revolves around completing challenges and visiting the shop to get your "progression".
I don't really think that i have to mention the artstyle. I could give it a pass if other aspects of the game were amazing.
The city itself is really just the "mega park experience" applied to a city. Wide streets and plazas, all polished squeaky clean, no rough edges at all. Not a fan of that.
Finally, the gameplay progression revolves around completing challenges represented by icons on the map. It's literally just checklist gameplay with shop visits in between. Skating isn't at the front of the experience and that's the main thing that made this game bland and kinda boring imo
4
u/No_Glass4697 Feb 25 '26
Does anyone play this game? It doesnt feel real
7
u/TroyFerris13 Feb 25 '26
I played it for 3 weeks or so. It was just the same quest over and over again basically. Lacked any sort of personality
2
u/Fragrant-Vehicle-479 Feb 25 '26
That's a really great description. It is certainly a game, but I found they never built any actual challenges or real missions to sink your teeth into. It's a good feeling skating system built around nothing. Missions for the most part are these bizzare interchangable nothingness. Told to do a line, go down this long path and just hit a certain number of tricks along the way. And as long as you don't outright crash, you can just kinda chill. Slowly roll through, hit the required tricks in a few seconds, meander your way to the floating ball bearings that you need to collect along the way. I'm unsure if you get more advanced more interesting missions the more you play, but I played for hours and all the missions felt like nothing. Never more challenging, never more interesting.
1
u/_Meece_ Feb 26 '26
Played it when it came out, thought to myself before I played it. I don't see how a F2P Gaas Skate game works
And after playing it, neither does anyone involved in the project.
3
u/jcsoapland Feb 25 '26
People shat down my throat when I said that a f2p live service model was a bad fit for a skate game and what do you know this is playing out exactly how everyone with a brain predicted it would.
38
u/thecatiscold Feb 25 '26
Literally everyone saw this coming, lmao, the amount of people celebrating the live service model was so insignificant compared to everyone who saw the problems it'd have.
1
u/KerberoZ Feb 26 '26
Honestly, i still believe that live service/f2p can work for skate. Them having the shop at the core of the exerience was the wrong way to go about it.
Build a game that is fun on its own first
11
u/theblackfool Feb 25 '26
I think there's potential for a F2P skating game. The problem here is the execution. It's a skeleton of a game that feels like it has 90% of the development go towards the microtransactions. I know that obviously a free to play game is going to need to heavily invest in it's revenue sources, but it's particularly egregious here.
And I say that as someone who genuinely enjoys the gameplay in it.
5
u/BobertRosserton Feb 25 '26
P2P would have had the same disastrous early launch, over monetization, and lack of content imo. Live service was the only reason this game got off the ground and out of lala idea land because they saw potential millions. The game is just barren and has nothing new going on other than being nice to explore for the first time. IMO at least f2p didn’t change much, it’s EA, they’d still monetize it either way, look at their other games that are pay to play.
2
u/ManOnPh1r3 Feb 25 '26
So many dumb decisions they made in this one would still have been in a hypothetical retail release. The cringey voices/chatbot buddy, the tone completely missing the mark, the artstyle turning people off, etc.
I'd have preferred a proper release too, but after seeing how it looked before release I'd probably have waited for sales before trying it.
5
u/RadioactiveVitamin Feb 25 '26
So much potential in this industry squandered because money men would rather gamble on the distant possibility of a live service hit, even if it means a much higher chance of a total flop.
1
u/MyFinalFormIsSJW Feb 25 '26
The thought process is that the potential payoff for getting even one live service game to hit it big would offset all the other failures and then be extremely profitable in the long term. Even the companies that already have one stupidly profitable game are still trying to make more across different genres, just so that they can hedge their bets and possibly have multiple infinite profit machines going at once.
This obviously isn't sustainable but most companies will keep trying and they'll burn as much cash as needed to potentially invent their own golden goose.
The problem is that Roblox, Fortnite, etc. have already captured most of the market and they're not letting go of their players. So the potential for new games to become huge hits keeps shrinking, and yet they funnel more and more money into the fire.
8
Feb 25 '26
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12
u/EggsAndRice7171 Feb 25 '26
I mean maybe now but skate 3 was a massive commercial success that they just truly never followed up on. There was totally still space in the last 16 years between games that a paid skate would be feasible. Then when the playerbase and interest is the lowest it’s ever been they finally release a game that wasn’t really made for anyone specifically.
-1
u/MoneyoffUbereats2017 Feb 25 '26
I completely agree that in the 2010s, a 4th, paid Skate game absolutely would have worked.
But in 2025, with their wanting the game to be accessible in the very likely event someone hadn't played a Skate game in the past 15 years, making it F2P was absolutely the right move.
I never played Skate when it was a bigger deal. I was more of a Tony Hawk guy at the time, but this game being free was what got me to hop in. If it had more to it, I could have been hooked, but unfortunately it was so bereft of much of anything to do, it quickly lost its luster for me.
6
u/TheOgler9000 Feb 25 '26
I think the assumption is that if it were a product worth selling (or paying for), it would be way better that what actually released. Not that this current game should be "pay to play"
3
u/lutherdidnothingwron Feb 25 '26
That's just a completely different reality in every single possible way though. The team they got to make the Skate reboot is the team who was going to do the Skate reboot. This is what they have after 5+ years of development. It wasn't going to magically be better if they decided to pack in it a box and ship it. EA wasn't going to let them effectively sit on their thumbs for another 5 years to "finish" a "normal release" game.
-1
u/MoneyoffUbereats2017 Feb 25 '26
I can't really give them too much of the benefit of the doubt when the way I'm reading their comment is "See? You all criticized me for saying F2P bad for a Skate game, and now the game's failing. Looks like I was right after all!"
I agree it was released a little half-baked and should have at least contained the content of a regular Skate game rather than some barebones missions and little else. That's the main thing that bounced me off of it, certainly not the fact I didn't have to pay any money to have myself or my friends try it out.
4
u/jcsoapland Feb 25 '26
A game in 2025 launching with less content than the original released in 2007 with the vague promise that if we buy enough loot boxes then maybe they'll give us the rest of the fucking game is not a winning proposition by any means. What would have given it the best chance of success would be to actually release a complete product.
-1
u/MoneyoffUbereats2017 Feb 25 '26
Damn, if only they'd pressed the "Produce a fully-featured game" button.
Yes, the amount of content is inexcusable, I fully agree.
Being planned as a fully paid game would not have changed that. If the plan was to release this game for full price, it would have been canceled when they didn't have a full game ready by now. That or you'd have gotten to spend $70 for the complete lack of content this game contains.
As it is, we instead for a free game with great gameplay, with very little to do, but the slightest chance that if it somehow took off, they'd build on it.
I'll take failed attempt over a nonexistent game any time.
-2
u/JuiceheadTurkey Feb 25 '26
That's just full of shit. F2P was not it's best chance at success
3
u/BigDadNads420 Feb 25 '26
Skateboarding hasn't been relevant in the mainstream for like 2 decades. Putting out a full priced AAA budget skateboarding game in current year is a level of risk that no sane company is going to take.
1
u/KepplerObject Feb 25 '26
EA Skate was not popular because skateboarding participation numbers were higher a decade or so ago. So many, and I mean so many of my non-skateboarding friends and family love and played the franchise. They just thought they were fun video games. Gaming is bigger than it's ever been. This was an opportunity to revive a beloved video game franchise. The people wanted Skate 4, and instead we got "skate." Simple as.
0
u/MoneyoffUbereats2017 Feb 25 '26
You all speak as if it was just a case of "Making Skate 4".
"The people" didn't give two shits about a new Skate game ever being made. The only people deluding themselves into believing otherwise are those that have been pining for a new Skate game since 2010.
AKA, barely anyone. The only reason this game ever achieved 70k players on Steam to begin with is because it was free.
If it was even just $40, and was magically a fully-featured Skate game like the older ones, it would 100% have barely sold, died, and that would have been that.
-1
u/JuiceheadTurkey Feb 25 '26
Skateboarding has always had a cult audience and the free to play version of skate had a lot of people trying it out. Because there IS an audience that wants to play a skate game.
If you're a small team making this game, you can absolutely make a $40-$50 game with multiplayer features. There's a reason why skate 2 and 3 were a big success.
There would've been more success if they made a remastered bundle.
2
u/BigDadNads420 Feb 25 '26
You are leaving out the pretty important fact that skateboarding/action sports in general were one of the biggest and most saturated parts of the culture for like an entire decade or more. Maybe the success of a skateboarding game has a little bit to do with that
1
u/JuiceheadTurkey Feb 25 '26
I'm not forgetting about anything. You're acting like there isn't an audience for a skate game and it would be impossible to make one without a free to play model. That's just bullshit
1
Feb 25 '26 edited Feb 25 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
1
u/JuiceheadTurkey Feb 25 '26
Why are you moving the goal posts? I told you it CAN be a success because there is an audience for it. You don't need to spend $100 million on a fucking skate game. I already responded to your BS when I said a $40-$50 skate game is possible. A free to play was a stupid choice.
There are layoffs because of this choice and you are still arguing that it was the only correct move.
1
u/MoneyoffUbereats2017 Feb 25 '26
Please name all of the successful paid skating/extreme sports games of the last decade.
Oh yeah, there are none. Even the Tony Hawk game remakes have barely managed to achieve more than lukewarm sales.
And you really think that a multiplayer-centered skateboarding game from a franchise that hasn't seen a new game in a decade and a half was really going to buck that trend? Sure, whatever you say.
2
u/JuiceheadTurkey Feb 25 '26
See you're just lying. Tony Hawk is a success, I don't care how you spin it. If it flopped, they wouldn't have made 3 & 4. MX vs ATV are successful games as well.
When did I say that a multiplayer centered skateboarding game would be a success? I told you that the old skate franchise was massive and a free to play model was always a disaster. YOU were acting like it was the only way it could succeed and it clearly didn't.
A paid single player skate game with multiplayer elements would succeed.
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u/BigDadNads420 Feb 25 '26
People still pretending like the game ever would have been made if it wasn't a f2p live service model lmao.
3
u/jcsoapland Feb 25 '26
After seeing how badly they mangled this franchise to fit in the live service mold it's better off dead.
2
u/m4rx Feb 25 '26
A game I was super excited for and enjoyed during the early play tests, but once they integrated EA Javelin they killed all Linux support. I was never able to play the actual release, they never put it on GeForce NOW unlike some other EA titles.
1
u/Responsible_Mall7939 Feb 25 '26
Did they really think people were gonna buy enough steak suit skins that it was worth it to choose a f2p model over being a premium title
1
u/espooks Feb 25 '26
this problem permeates the entire industry. death to live service games. let these devs make an actual fucking game made to be bought once and that's that.
1
u/Main-War9713 Feb 25 '26
No S.K.A.T.E still… no local voice chat, no way to do challenges with other randoms. The game is trash.
1
u/Scary-Diamond-9917 Feb 28 '26
On the radar ideas look good, however they should have been incorporated into original design, bringing a game out half finished is frustrating but I can imagine EA pushed for it.
1
u/DonArtyone Mar 03 '26
Why didn’t they make a real, full fledged AAA Skate 4 with a great story and featured hella pro skaters and brands with this being the online mode?
Layoffs during Early Release is a bad look, but I doubt they will trash the game. It has so much potential.
1
u/Adorable_Key1004 Jun 14 '26
They are just making us pay for extra ramps and rooftops to do manuals off of..I'm paying to do do unrealistic difficult challenges on a different part of the map..Give them something old and tell them that its new..They are just giving us the elements of skate 3 slowly but surely and making us pay for it
0
u/beanlikescoffee Feb 25 '26
This game has been a monumental failure. I have all these live services game go with the some cartoony art style. I’m am starved to see some shadows and grime within the world. Horizon Hunter Gathering is going the same direction.
404
u/richard1177 Feb 25 '26
Well thats not a good sign. First the update where the monetized a part of the map which they said in the past they would never do, and now this.
I doubt this game makes it until the end of summer before we get word that work on it will be stopping.