Skate is OFFICIALLY DEAD - Uninstalling Until Further Notice

What's up gamers? Hope you're all doing well and having a great start to the week. And yes, you read that right. Skate, EA's latest online project, is officially dead. And how strange is that, right? Well, not really if you know EA. They've completely destroyed this game, and this was one of the fears I had when I first started playing.

The Player Population Has Dropped to Zero

It's incredible to log into a game, connect, and see absolutely no players online. You wander through the city, and the only thing you see are NPCs, pedestrians just walking around without a single real player in sight. This is already a bad sign, a really bad sign. The game launched in Early Access back in September 2025 with massive numbers. According to the data I've been digging up, Skate hit around 2 million players in its first 24 hours and reached over 23 million total players across all platforms by the end of last year. The Steam peak was around 135,000 concurrent players at launch. Now? We're looking at around 3,000 to 5,000 concurrent players on Steam on a good day. That's a 98% drop from the peak. A ninety-eight percent drop, gamers. Let that sink in.

The console numbers might be slightly better since the majority of Skate's audience started there, but the writing's on the wall. When you boot up the game and San Vansterdam feels like a ghost town, something has gone horribly wrong. The city that was supposed to be this vibrant, living multiplayer world where skaters come together has turned into a desolate wasteland. You're just skating in circles with nobody around, which completely defeats the purpose of what this game was supposed to be.

No New Season and No Signs of One Coming Soon

Season 2 just launched in December, and yeah, they added some new tricks like Impossibles and improved Handplants, opened up a few new skateable areas like the Eelside Tunnels and some rooftop spots, and threw in a co-op mode. On paper, it sounds good. But here's the problem: it's too little, too late. The updates feel surface-level, like they're checking boxes on a roadmap without actually addressing the fundamental issues that are driving players away.

Where's the substantial content? Where's the innovation that would make people want to come back? Season 2 brought some quality-of-life improvements and a handful of new areas, but when you're hemorrhaging players at this rate, you need something massive to bring them back. A couple new tricks and a co-op mode aren't going to cut it. And looking at the roadmap, Season 3 promises leaderboards, more character slots with tattoos, player-created parts, and Darkslides. Great. But when is it coming? We don't have a date. We don't have concrete details. Just vague promises about "future seasons."

The dev updates talk about tuning progression and rewards, fixing bugs, and listening to community feedback. But what players are actually experiencing is radio silence on anything meaningful. It feels like EA and Full Circle are going through the motions, releasing token updates while the game slowly dies around them.

Monotony Has Killed Us

Unfortunately, no matter how good free skating is, there comes a point where you find yourself walking in circles around the city. You're practically wandering aimlessly. The missions have become so repetitive, appearing in the same locations with slight variations, that they literally lose all meaning. There's no reason to replay them. You've done this grind before. You've hit this rail before. You've landed this trick at this exact spot before. Over and over and over again.

San Vansterdam is a beautiful city. The graphics are solid, the skating physics are fun when they work, and the customization is decent. But there's nothing to do in it. The world feels empty not just because of the lack of players, but because there's a lack of meaningful content to engage with. Where are the dynamic events? Where are the random challenges that keep you on your toes? Where's the progression system that actually feels rewarding?

The missions are cookie-cutter templates dropped into different parts of the map. Do this trick here. Grind this rail there. Collect these points. It's the same loop endlessly repeated, and after a while, your brain just checks out. You realize you're skating around aimlessly because there's genuinely nothing interesting left to do. The game desperately needs more variety, more depth, more reasons to keep logging in. But EA hasn't delivered on that front.

Even the seasonal events like Skate-o-Ween and 7-Ply Maple Harvest felt half-baked. They added some themed cosmetics you could earn and tweaked a few community parks, but they didn't fundamentally change the experience. It's just the same gameplay loop with a Halloween or Thanksgiving skin slapped on top. Players saw through it immediately.

Can the Community Keep It Alive?

Well, we don't know for how long. Sure, Skate has stayed somewhat afloat thanks to players' creativity in recording themselves and using the game's tools to create content. The Replay Editor improvements in Season 2 added advanced features like keyframes, better trimming, and enhanced camera controls, which is great for the content creators who are still around. People are making sick clips, sharing them on skate.REEL and social media, and trying to keep the vibe alive.

But here's the brutal truth: a game cannot survive on its editing mode alone. I don't care how good the Replay Editor is. If the core gameplay loop is boring and repetitive, if there's no player population to interact with, if there's no meaningful content to engage with, then all the cinematic camera angles in the world aren't going to save it. Content creation can only carry a game so far before people realize they're polishing a turd.

Look at games like Fortnite, Apex Legends, or even smaller titles like Among Us. They succeeded because they had strong core gameplay that kept people coming back, combined with community engagement and regular meaningful updates. Skate has the community trying to prop it up, but EA and Full Circle aren't giving them anything to work with. The foundation is crumbling, and eventually, even the most dedicated content creators are going to move on to games that actually respect their time and creativity.

A Shame, But I'm Uninstalling Until Further Notice

Is it a shame? Absolutely. This is a game with so much potential ahead of it that they've just thrown in the garbage. They had the opportunity to revive the entire Skate franchise, to bring back the magic of Skate 2 and Skate 3, games that people still love and play to this day. Instead, they've done the complete opposite. It's like the game is just a money laundering operation where the company said, "Create this, put it out there, and forget about it."

EA's track record speaks for itself. They've reduced the rewards for completing tasks, making the grind longer and more tedious just to inflate player engagement metrics. They've focused on selling cosmetics and battle passes while neglecting the actual gameplay. Reports from October showed that Full Circle was lowering the amount of Chips earned from tasks, pushing players to spend more time grinding for the same rewards. This is classic live-service manipulation designed to keep "Monthly Active Users" numbers up for quarterly earnings reports while providing minimal actual value to players.

The free-to-play model was supposed to lower the barrier to entry and create this massive community. Instead, it became a framework for EA to nickel-and-dime players through microtransactions while delivering a hollow, repetitive experience. They generated about $3 million in cosmetic sales on PC alone early on, which shows players were willing to spend money. But instead of reinvesting that into meaningful content and updates, EA seems content to let the game wither on the vine.

The Founder's Packs are gone now, replaced by Welcome Packs and a Season 2 Starter Pack. They're still trying to squeeze money out of the dwindling player base, but at this point, who's even buying? The Steam reviews have taken a nosedive. The concurrent player counts are in the gutter. The enthusiasm has evaporated. Skate has all the hallmarks of a game that EA will quietly abandon, maybe keep the servers running for the handful of die-hards, but never truly commit to fixing or improving.

EA Becomes Increasingly the WORST COMPANY

I'm not saying it. Everyone's saying it. EA was literally voted "Worst Company in America" twice in a row back in 2012 and 2013, beating out companies responsible for oil spills and the mortgage crisis. Think about that for a second. A video game company was considered worse than corporations that caused environmental disasters and financial meltdowns. Why? Because of their relentless anti-consumer practices, their habit of acquiring beloved studios only to shut them down, their obsession with microtransactions and loot boxes, and their complete dismissal of player feedback.

In 2018, USA Today ranked EA as the fifth most hated company in the United States. They had the most downvoted comment in Reddit history when they tried to defend the pay-to-win mechanics in Star Wars Battlefront II. They've been criticized for prioritizing sequels and live-service models over innovation and new intellectual property. CEO Andrew Wilson literally said EA would "double down on owned IP, sports, and massive online communities," which is corporate speak for "We're going to milk our existing franchises dry and pump out the same games year after year."

Now, in 2025, EA got bought out in a $55 billion deal by Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund, Silver Lake, and Affinity Partners. The largest private equity-funded buyout in history. While analysts call it "a win for investors," gamers are rightfully concerned about what this means for creative freedom. EA claims nothing will change, but we all know better. When a company goes private and is controlled by investors who care only about the bottom line, quality suffers. Innovation dies. Games become products designed to extract maximum revenue with minimum investment.

The criticism isn't new, and it's not going away. EA has a long history of buying up development studios for their intellectual property, forcing changes that ruin the quality of games, and then shutting those studios down when they're no longer "profitable." Look at what happened to BioWare with Mass Effect: Andromeda and Anthem. Both games were rushed to meet EA's deadlines, resulting in disastrous launches and nightmarish working conditions for developers. EA doesn't care about making great games. They care about making money, period.

The Verdict: Skate is Dead

So where does that leave Skate? Dead in the water. EA launched this game as a flagship return to the beloved franchise, marketed it as this revolutionary free-to-play experience, and then proceeded to treat it like every other live-service cash grab in their portfolio. They didn't give it the support it needed. They didn't listen to the community in any meaningful way. They made the same mistakes they always make: prioritizing short-term profits over long-term quality.

The player counts don't lie. The Steam concurrent numbers have cratered from 135,000 at launch to barely scraping 5,000 on a good day. That's catastrophic. The game that was supposed to usher in a new era of skateboarding games has become another cautionary tale about the dangers of live-service development and corporate greed. Full Circle, the development team, might have good intentions, but they're hamstrung by EA's business model and corporate oversight. They're fighting a losing battle.

I've spent hours in San Vansterdam. I've explored every corner of that city. I've tried to stay optimistic, thinking maybe the next update would turn things around. But after months of repetitive missions, dwindling player counts, and a clear lack of vision from EA, I'm done. I'm uninstalling Skate until further notice. Maybe one day EA will wake up and realize they've squandered an incredible opportunity. Maybe they'll invest real resources into fixing the game, adding substantial content, and actually listening to their community. But I'm not holding my breath.

For now, Skate joins the long list of promising games that EA has destroyed through negligence and greed. It's a damn shame, but it's the reality we're living in. If you're still playing, more power to you. But for me, the city's gone dark. San Vansterdam is a ghost town, and I'm moving on.

So hey gamers, that's where I stand on Skate. It's dead. EA killed it. And until I see some real evidence that they're going to fix this mess, I'm out. If you've had similar experiences or you're still holding out hope, let me know in the comments. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe Season 3 will be the miracle update that saves everything. But based on EA's track record? I wouldn't bet on it. See you in the next post, and let's hope it's about a game that actually respects our time and money.