When I launch the new Skate EA it just crashes my PC

Happened to me when it first came out for play test. The only way I got around it was opening the game directly from its file and then opening a new tab right after the game opens. And then once it goes into the start screen you can tab back in.

Idk if it works for everyone but it worked for me. If you are launching via steam have the ea app installed as well. The second I installed it the crashing significantly reduced. Hope this helps you all 

ryzen 5600x 32gb ram rtx 5070 pc 

9800X3D & 5080 here. Same thing was happening months ago and it’s back for me making the game unplayable on PC. Launching from the Steam app or the EA app makes no difference. I have a dual monitor setup and wondering if it’s something to do with that. Regardless it’s pathetic that this is still happening when they’re still gleefully rolling out awful content drops and micro transactions and refusing to address major functionality issues. Let alone gameplay ones. This is the nail in the coffin for me. Diabolical live service from full circle, I’ll give it one more shot for season 3 and if it bricks my PC again I’m completely done with it. They can blame the anti cheat (which by the way is completely unnecessary in a game like skate ffs) but Battlefield, Star Wars and FC26 all launch fine without these issues. Incompetent dev team. 

It forces full screen for a moment when it launches for me too, it's very aggressive cause it's setting the resolution so low.

Keeping the game in the background while it initially loads avoids this problem for me, I just open a browser until i think it's on the title screen.

Thanks for the anwser. Are you also getting total system freezes? Every time I launch the game, it forces itself into windowed fullscreen. I've actually uninstalled it for now because it's happening so frequently, and I don't want to keep hard crashing my PC.

I suggest launching the game in windowed mode. Use "alt+enter" if needed, then set it in the settings. Ever since i've been booting the game in windowed mode i stopped having crashes on game load.

For some ungodly reason the game causes your desktop resolution to drop to like 480p IF it's focused. So it also helps to open skate, and just have it in the background until it's done loading.

It's a very strange issue. I do think it might also be correlated with Windows Defender and the anti-cheat. 

Since early February 2026, I’ve been experiencing an issue where launching Skate via Steam causes a black screen and freezes my entire PC. This started happening out of nowhere, even though the game ran fine before.

The Solution (That works for me):
The issue seems to be related to the EA AntiCheat. Repairing or reinstalling it fixes the crash.

How to do it:

1. Go to your Steam folder: ...\Steam\steamapps\common\Skate\__Installer\EAAntiCheat
2. Run EAAntiCheat.Installer.exe.
3. Select Repair/Update (or Uninstall and Reinstall).

To avoid any crashes, I currently run the repair/update every time before I start the game. It’s a bit annoying, but it works until a permanent patch is released. Hope this helps!

Yay, after all these months this is starting to happen for me.

I launch skate. And everything just freezes, until I hit the reset button... 5600x+3070+32gb+ssd

Hi all reading this post, I found a fix for myself, please let me know if this works for you as well. I have the exact same issue as OP when I do not follow the following steps. I have to do this every single time I want to play skate otherwise my GPU crashes. I am on the latest Nvidia drivers.

Go to EA app -> Library -> 3 Dots on Skate -> View Properties -> Open Folder -> DELETE FOLDER shader_cache -> OPEN _Installer -> RUN Cleanup (Application) -> Wait 10 seconds -> Launch Skate through EA app. 

If it still does not launch, 3 Dots on Skate -> Repair

shader_cache will not re-appear in the game files unless you repair. This has not affected my game.

RTX 4070 TI, Ryzen 9 5900x, 32GB Ram

Same there. Before the new update this never happened to me. Hope they see this post