The Skate reboot is finally out in early access, ending a decade-long drought for EA’s popular skateboarding series. You’d think its various internet subcommunities would be full of cool skateboarding tricks: kickflips over massive staircases, creative rail lines through corporate plazas, maybe even the rare 900. You’d be wrong. Instead, the most popular Skate clips are of people… somersaulting?
Since the 2007 release of the original Skate, the Skate series has always purported to be a realistic skateboarding sim. A low-angled camera mimicked the aesthetic of early aughts skating videos. Its signature “Flick-It” control scheme — in which you use thumbsticks, rather than button inputs, to perform flip tricks — made players feel like they were controlling a legit skateboard. Sure, some pushed these systems to mind-boggling limits, but Skate and its two sequels always felt like they were rooted in the inviolable laws that governed the real world.
Skate (2025) has been out for a day and has already skewered that reputation.
To its credit, this new iteration of Skate indeed features a solid recreation of the “Flick-It” system. You still use the right thumbstick to dictate which direction your board spins, and can use it to do everything from a simple shove-it to a complex three-flip. But there are a number of non-skateboarding actions you’re taught in short order. (The very first action you’re asked to perform in the tutorial? Climbing a wall, like it’s Assassin’s Creed.) By dismounting your skateboard and holding either trigger on a controller, you can somersault endlessly, as if physics would ever allow that.
You can use this to get around San Vansterdam, the setting of Skate, even though it’s significantly slower than just skating:
Players have also used it as the basis for stunts that would’ve been way cooler on a skateboard:
They’ve hurled themselves off skyscrapers into steep vertical drops, even though those drops also would’ve been way cooler performed on a skateboard:
They’ve somersaulted around pools, even though we all know pools are meant for skating, obviously:
They’ve even tarnished the holy sanctity of the skate park:
Of course, a level of absurdity is to be expected in a skateboarding game; silliness is part of the DNA of the sport. Even the original Skate games allowed you to coffin — that’s when you lie down face-up on your board — with pretty much no limitations. But my sense is the disregard of Skate’s core tenets would go down a lot easier with diehard fans if the game itself didn’t already commit a litany of other perceived sins.
As of this writing, Skate (2025) is a fully online multiplayer game, with no option for an offline mode. While annoying, and a design choice I could’ve sworn we settled years ago, it’s been exacerbated by reports of lengthy queues and players struggling to even get into the game. (Just this morning, to confirm some details for this article, I ended up stuck in a queue.) Beyond standard bugs, players say missions don’t always populate, gating progress. It doesn’t star any pro skaters or feature many skate apparel brands. There’s no cursing — which, if you’ve met a skater, c’mon. And it commits the biggest sin of all: loot boxes.
The Fortniteification of games, everybody. If it hasn’t come for your favorite franchise yet, it will.