Skate. or Skam.

As someone who has supported Skate since the beginning, it’s heartbreaking to see how far this series has drifted from what made it so special. This isn’t just a rough early access release, it feels like a game built without skaters or fans in mind.

The core mechanics that once felt fluid, creative, and empowering now feel clunky and frustrating. The city doesn’t even feel like it’s designed to be skated, challenges are repetitive and uninspired, and iconic modes like magazine photo shoots or Hall of Meat have challenges have been stripped of their charm for tacky and cheap replacements. Instead, we’re left with bland filler that feels anti skater at its core.

Worse still, the focus isn’t on skating or culture at all, it’s on monetisation. The free to play model has gutted customisation, turning what was once a full suite of creative options into a storefront with overpriced gear. $5 for a single board is not just insulting, it’s a betrayal of the community that kept Skate alive for over a decade. The free gear feels like generic throwaway content and that’s after you’ve spent countless hours grinding for it, while the real, branded items fans loved in past games are locked behind a paywall.

Skate was never about chasing trends or building a microtransaction economy. It was about freedom, authenticity, and a culture that EA once captured better than anyone else. This new version misses the mark completely, alienating the very skaters and fans who made this franchise iconic.

Right now, Skate doesn’t feel like a love letter to skateboarding, it feels like a product designed to extract money, sadly, another example of the growing trend in gaming where greed takes priority over players and that’s not just disappointing. It’s the death of what original Skate stood for.