Skate will release into early access at “the end of summer”, say EA

Do one of those kick-the-flips. Okay, now do it again but spinny. Wow, fellow teen, that was radical, well done. Here is some video game news for you as a reward: physics-funny skateboarding sim Skate (aka Skate 4) will release in a couple of months. That’s what publishers Electronic Arts say, anyway. You must be very excited to do more dinner tray flips and three-hundred-and-sixty popular shovel-its. Why yes, I am something of a skate boarder myself. How keen-eyed of you to notice.

“Early Access is coming at the end of summer 2025 (Northern Hemisphere!). Yes, just months away now,” said EA in a development blog for the open world skating game. If you haven’t been keeping up, Skate is a spiritual rebootening of the console-only series of wheeled wood games, which last appeared with Skate 3 in the misty days of 2010. The upcoming free-to-play game’s title is stylised as “skate.” – always lower case with a full stop. We have no time for such aberrations of language here at RPS. It is Skate.

The publisher also points out that you can sign up to playtest it early, via their “Skate Insider” program, saying that “everyone who signs up as a [Skate] Insider by June 27 will get invited to playtest before Early Access launch.” And that playtest is due to begin July 2nd.

They’ve had a bunch of similar playtests already but this one has some bigger updates to visuals, menus, tutorials, missions, cosmetics, and the wider open city of San Vansterdam. Signing up involves creating a rad playtester account with sweet EA and signing a cool NDA that affirms you won’t share any gnarly pictures or videos of the game. Following the rules is sick, bro. Wish somebody had told those guys who shared entire builds of the game early.

EA recently also confirmed that the game will be online-only, triggering a howl of agony from everyone who follows the court case against Ubisoft for shuttering online racing game The Crew. This may add to your concerns that the free-to-play model will drag down an otherwise perfectly good sports game. For me, a lot of that will depend on how invasive the inevitable free-to-play upselling gets. How hard will they push my FOMO for flashy trainers? Anyway, the game is finally wishlistable on Steam.

As you can tell from my knowledge of tricks such as the Casper-the-Ghost flip and the No Compliance, I’m a fan of skating games. We’ve seen some good ones over the last buncha years, even in Skate’s absence. The OlliOlli games made my heart pump and my thumbs bleed. Skater XL and Session both pleased me with their ragdolling physics and simmy joystick flipping. Meanwhile, the dreamlike demo for upcoming narrative cruiseabout Skate Story has me desirous of a fragile glass body. And, ah, let us not forget Skatebird. Despite all the impatient laments for Skate 4, things for road surfing fans have not been all bad.