Skate will frontside pop shuvit into early access in 2025

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It's got boned ollies now.

Skate trailer still - guy doing a sick kick flip over a fence
(Image credit: Electronic Arts)

Ready your fragile skeletons, virtual skaters: Skate will launch in early access in 2025, as announced earlier today in a tweet from the official Skate account on X. "We're incredibly stoked to announce that skate. will be launching in Early Access in 2025. We'll share more details on what to expect in the coming months," developer Full Circle said. Personally, I expect skating. 

Skate, or "skate." as it's officially stylized in a bid to frustrate anyone who has to mention the game in a headline, is the long-awaited relaunch of EA's Skate franchise, which hasn't gotten a sequel since 2010's Skate 3. The new Skate was officially revealed in 2021 alongside Full Circle, a new, fully remote EA development studio. Skate will be a free-to-play game with a microtransaction-driven live-service model.

Skate will take place in the fictional city of San Vansterdam, which Full Circle has described as a massively multiplayer space studded with solo skate challenges, pop-up multiplayer public events, and private match-style throwdowns that players can initiate on the fly. Skate will also let players drop down objects like rails and ramps on the fly to set up their own skate lines. You can catch a glimpse of that as skaters slap down ramps in the early access announcement teaser above.

Full Circle's been running internal Skate playtests since 2022, and video highlights from those playtests are available on YouTube alongside longer development updates. In the most recent dev update video from June 2024, Full Circle described its latest improvements to Skate's trademark, flick-based trick control scheme, which it said will have "improved accuracy and control."

Full Circle also said it's added a bunch of new tricks. I'm pleased to report that Skate will now feature both slappies and boned ollies, things I both know and understand. The studio also set aside a moment to confirm that socks will be customizable. That's skate culture, to me.

I was more of a Tony Hawk's Pro Skater kid growing up, but given that Skate's going the free-to-play route, I have no reason not to show up in 2025 when it hits early access. I might end up realizing I suck too badly with the flick controls to do any real skating, but hey—as long as I can launch myself off a rooftop while doing a Christ Air, I'll be content.

Lincoln Carpenter
Lincoln Carpenter
News Writer

Lincoln has been writing about games for 12 years—unless you include the essays about procedural storytelling in Dwarf Fortress he convinced his college professors to accept. Leveraging the brainworms from a youth spent in World of Warcraft to write for sites like Waypoint, Polygon, and Fanbyte, Lincoln spent three years freelancing for PC Gamer before joining on as a full-time News Writer in 2024, bringing an expertise in Caves of Qud bird diplomacy, getting sons killed in Crusader Kings, and hitting dinosaurs with hammers in Monster Hunter.