‘Skate’ won’t be available to play offline: “So dumb”

EA has confirmed that its rebooted Skate game won’t be available to play offline and fans are furious.

• READ MORE: Every ‘Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater’ soundtrack – ranked!

A follow-up to 2010’s Skate 3 was first announced in 2020 and in the years that have followed, developers EA have confirmed the rebooted game will be free-to-play so it will appeal to Gen-Z gamers. Skate will be supported by microtransactions but these won’t offer “gameplay-altering advantages”.

In the first installment of The Grind newsletter, the team behind Skate have now revealed that the game won’t be available to play offline. “The simple answer: No,” they wrote in a FAQ.

“The game and city are designed to be a living, breathing massively multiplayer skateboarding sandbox that is always online and always evolving. You’ll see bigger things evolve, like changes to the city over time, as well as smaller things, like live events and other in-game activities. In order to deliver on our vision of a skateboarding world, the game will always require a live connection. That is probably not much of a surprise if you’ve been in our playtest.”

The news hasn’t gone down well with fans. “Not to beat a dead horse, but what the heck EA. These decisions are straight up baffling. I was fairly optimistic for this series returning, such a shame,” one fan wrote on Reddit. “One day the servers will be shut down and you won’t be able to play anymore,” explained another.

You absolutely hate to see it https://t.co/WPxrAxyDkr

— Hopecaster -re:born- (@HopecasterNW) April 24, 2025

“Prime example of this is The Crew. Game was online only and Ubisoft shut down the servers. The game literally is now unplayable. Not even the story mode. Video games should not have to deal with this kind of fate,” added a third. “Why would you not just add an offline mode,” wrote another fan while others are worried about queueing up to skate popular locations, just like real life.

Elsewhere in The Grind, Skate developers defended adding microtransactions to beta tests and confirmed an early access version of the game would be launching later this year.

“We have an ambitious vision for Skate: an ever-growing, ever-evolving skateboarding sandbox that expands over time with the feedback of the players living in San Vansterdam. Our Early Access launch will only be Day One of that experience, a starting point from which new features, improvements, and content will be added over time,” they wrote. “We don’t consider the Early Access launch the ‘finished version’ of Skate and neither should you.”

However exact release details have yet to be confirmed.

In other news, Nintendo fans are fighting back against Switch 2 scalpers by flooding eBay with fake listings. According to early sales data, the Switch 2 looks set to become the fastest-selling console of all time even if gamers are currently struggling to pre-order one.

The post ‘Skate’ won’t be available to play offline: “So dumb” appeared first on NME.