If Decksplash does not reach 100,000 players during a free week then Bossa Studios will cancel the game

Skateboard turf-war game Decksplash will grind into Early Access on November 10—but only if 100,000 players try it out for free during the preceding week. If it doesn't reach that milestone, then the game is cancelled. Seriously.

The free week starts on Steam on November 2 and players can jump in for three-on-three PvP matches in which you gain control of parts of the arena by nailing combos of grinds, spins, and manuals and then splatting down your team's paint on the ground as you land.

Bossa Studios, of Surgeon Simulator and I Am Bread, is the developer, and it's clearly prepared to take a huge risk on this one. 100,000 is no small number—imagine all that effort going down the drain. It's "skate or die", as Bossa has dubbed it. It'll be interesting to see how it goes down with players.

If you do hop in early then any loot, levels and coins (for loot boxes and skateboard customisation) will transfer over to the full game. You'll also receive a unique board set.

Mat tried the game out in May and thought it was a neat mash-up of Rocket League and Splatoon. Aside from a few gripes he was impressed: you can read about his time with it here.

Here's the Steam page.

Samuel is a freelance journalist and editor who first wrote for PC Gamer nearly a decade ago. Since then he's had stints as a VR specialist, mouse reviewer, and previewer of promising indie games, and is now regularly writing about Fortnite. What he loves most is longer form, interview-led reporting, whether that's Ken Levine on the one phone call that saved his studio, Tim Schafer on a milkman joke that inspired Psychonauts' best level, or historians on what Anno 1800 gets wrong about colonialism. He's based in London.