Despite mixed reviews, Skate's free-to-play excursion has managed to rake in over 15 million players in 3 weeks

The new Skate game has been a bit of a weird one—EA's first free-to-play foray with the series, one that currently sits at a 66% 'Mixed' rating on Steam. No Steam Deck compatibility thanks to Easy Anti-Cheat and a subpar open world seem to be the biggest culprits, according to the 33,000 user reviews. 'Fun but bland' is certainly the vibe I'm getting.

Yet, despite all that, the game has managed to reel in over 15 million players in the three weeks since its release.

Part of that will, of course, be down to the price tag—or lack thereof. But also, it seems that folk are simply hungry for another good-ass skating game. While Skate's launch day was fairly low-key with around 30,000 concurrent users according to SteamDB, that skyrocketed by an extra 100,000 over its first weekend to hit an all-time peak of 134,901 players. It's tapered out in the weeks since, but is still bringing in a pretty respectable 50,000 to 80,000 players each day.

That'll be sure to continue as the game launches its first season today—introducing new skateable areas, cosmetics, as well as additional tasks and challenges. There's also a handful of quality-of-life improvements—general upgrades in stability, "enhanced skater creation and customisation," as well as work on "core gameplay responsiveness and balance," according to a blog post on the game's Steam page.

It'll be interesting to see how many of these fixes address the most pressing issues players are having. Some of the negative reviews on Steam are pretty damning, after all. "This game kinda feels like buying a skateboard from Walmart," one wrote. "Like yeah, it looks the part, but the soul's missing., It technically works, but the quality's off, the vibe's watered down, and you can tell it wasn't built by people who live it."

Even your good ol' thumbs-up reviews seem to come with a heap of caveats. "Soulless and corporate but the skating feels good," one positive review wrote. "Hopefully this grows into a more engaging experience." Another wrote: "Barely passable just because the main mechanics are there and they're as fun as ever, but man does this game feel very lackluster compared to Skate 2 and Skate 3 when it comes down to just how much is there left to do."