Skate: All the key details on the skateboarding sim revival

Skate is a brand new entry in the Skate franchise, which dates back to the Xbox 360 in 2007. You might still be calling it Skate 4 if you haven't checked-in on its progress in a while.

While, yes, it is the fourth Skate game, its official name now is 'skate.' but I've opted to take out the period and lowercase 's' to save your brain some unnecessary pain while reading everything we know about Skate below.

You can expect details on its early access release, gameplay, who the developers are, and the latest footage available.

When is the Skate release date?

Skate is out now in early access as of September 16, launching to mixed reviews on Steam. You can see for yourself if those mixed reviews are justified without having to worry about blowing your money, as Skate is free to download on PC, and on PlayStation and Xbox consoles.

Yes, even with all of the playtests that have occurred over the years, Skate is still in an early access state. This may seem a bit frustrating, but public playtests that early-on in a game's development cycle are actually incredibly rare. So it makes sense that Skate is only in an early access state right now, as previous playtesters coping with janky gameplay and graphics can attest to.

Latest Skate trailer

Developer Full Circle released a short gameplay teaser before their July 2025 playtest. In it, it's clear that the graphics have received a major update—but temper expectations. While the environments and lighting look tastier, the character models still have the capacity to jump-scare you a little. It is launching into early access, after all.

There's plenty of footage of others playing the game now that Skate's in early access though, if you want to peruse YouTube or Twitch before committing to freeing up space on your hard drive and trying it for yourself.

Skate is free-to-play

Skate's developers at Full Circle are pitching the game as "an authentic evolution of the Skate franchise that can be enjoyed for years to come." Instead of a starting point for new, numbered entries released every couple years, this Skate will be a free-to-play, live-service game, continually updated with new content, events, and seasonal additions.

Free-to-play means microtransactions, of course, but Dan McCulloch, general manager at Full Circle, was up-front about the studio's "hard ground rules" for Skate monetization: "Skate is not pay-to-win, there are no areas of gameplay or the map that you'll have to pay to unlock, there won't be any loot boxes, and there's no gameplay-altering advantages that you can pay for."

Skate is always online

Unfortunately you can't play Skate without a constant internet connection, because "the game and city are designed to be a living, breathing massively multiplayer skateboarding sandbox that is always online and always evolving." That's according to the blog post delivering the news.

So, you need a good internet connection if you want a smooth time skating about the streets of San Vansterdam "in order to deliver on our vision," says the blog.

You'd think with the whole fiasco of The Crew being always online, and its subsequent unplayability when Ubisoft shut it down, would have served as lesson to Skate's publisher EA, but alas, here we are again.

Who's developing Skate?

A few months after announcing a new Skate, EA revealed it formed new studio Full Circle to handle development.

The studio is being headed up by former Xbox Live general manager Daniel McCulloch with creative leadership by Deran Chun and Chris "Cuz" Parry, both of who were part of Black Box, an EA subsidiary and the studio behind the original Skate games that was shut down in 2013.

Parry especially became the face of the franchise, with his infectious enthusiasm making him a popular figure among players. He was credited by many as being a driving force behind the authenticity of the game, so he’s a safe pair of hands for whatever comes next. He seemed very excited about the project during the EA Play stream as well, which bodes well.

Parry and Chung also highlighted Laura Miele, recently appointed as EA’s Chief of Worldwide Studios, as being a key figure in championing the need for Skate 4 at the upper echelons and ultimately getting the ball, or board, moving.

Skate gameplay

As mentioned before Skate is an always online live service game set in the fictional city of San Vansterdam, with up to 150 players able to play together at once in a server.

San Vansterdam is a massively multiplayer space dotted with solo skate challenges, pop-up multiplayer public events, and private match-style throwdowns that you can initiate on the fly. You can also drop down objects like rails and ramps on the fly to set up your own skate lines.

Here's a brief explanation of the four main activity concepts Full Circle is working with:

• Challenges: Bite-size, solo objectives like those in previous Skate games. Here, they rotate out regularly, so you've got a reliable set of new things to do
• Pop-Ups: Dynamic, cooperative city events. An example given was that a Pop-Up might appear requiring players to cooperatively earn 50,000 points in an area.
• Community Events: Carnival game-like public activities meant to celebrate the spirit of the cherished Skate pastime of hurling your skater's aggrieved body around like a meaty sock puppet.
• Throwdowns: User-initiated, customizable, competitive activities that you can place anywhere on the map. Sort of like Skate's version of a private match that you can initiate on the fly.

The blog post before the July 2025 playtest also promised more to come, so there are actually be more than 140 challenges now that the game is in early access.

Microtransactions

If a game's free-to-play, it needs some sort of way to make money. You can use 'San Van bucks' to buy in-game items. These bucks can be used on various cosmetic items, so it's not so much pay-to-play as it is pay-to-slay. As slay as hoodies and shorts can be, anyway.

You have to use a controller

Unfortunately for keyboard and mouse enthusiasts, you have to hook up a controller to your PC in order to play Skate. This is because of the franchise's signature 'Flick-It' control system that sets it apart from other skaters out there. For now, that is.

The blog post before the July playtest explained that "We’re not entirely writing off KBM—we’re always listening to feedback. So let us know your thoughts on our controller-only approach."

It is the first time a Skate game has ever released on PC, so I guess KBM fans can cut the developers some slack on this one.