EA has confirmed that its new Skate revival won't feature an offline mode, much to the frustration of eager fans.
Skate (stylised as skate.), was announced to be getting a revival way back in 2020. It's been half a decade since then, but the game has been in alpha playtesting since last year, and will be rolling out an early access release later this year.
It's an exciting time if you're a gamer who likes skating, as this and the upcoming Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3+4 remasters should whet your appetite for new skateboarding games.
With the new Skate having a more live service edge to it, EA has been slowly dripfeeding new nuggets of info for fans while it prepares for an early access launch.
The company has now revealed that the game will have no offline mode, and will require a constant internet connection to be able to play.
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“The simple answer: No. The game and city are designed to be a living, breathing massively multiplayer skateboarding sandbox that is always online and always evolving,” reads a new post from developer Full Circle.
“You’ll see bigger things evolve, like changes to the city over time, as well as smaller things, like live events and other in-game activities. In order to deliver on our vision of a skateboarding world, the game will always require a live connection. That is probably not much of a surprise if you’ve been in our playtest.”
Considering EA has previously stated that Skate will be coming to mobile, this feels like an odd choice.
It seems like you simply won't be able to whip your phone out in public and play a bit of Skate unless you can connect to a firm wireless hotspot, which is easier said than done.
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Even for those playing at home on stable connections, this'll still be a problem. If the servers go down for maintenance, or EA eventually takes them offline, you'll no longer be able to play.
"Honestly depressing slowly realizing they didn’t make this game for us," wrote one comment on Reddit.
"This game is gonna be so utterly bad compared to Skate 3," another wrote.
Other comments in the thread express their intention not to play the game. Even though EA is planning for it to be free-to-play, it sounds like fans might be skipping this one.
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With the upcoming new Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3 + 4 remasters coming on 11th July, it seems like more may flock to that one.
It should be noted that the earlier 1 + 2 remasters only ever featured an offline mode on Steam Deck, so the same issue could be at risk here.