A former developer on the reboot of the Skate series admitted that he wished the team had been given at least one more year of development time, rather than rushing to release an Early Access version.
Although the hype for the new Skate game hasn't reached Half-Life 3 levels, fans of the classic trilogy have been petitioning EA for years. After all, a full decade passed between the release of Skate 3 and the official announcement of the new title in 2020.
Despite high player expectations and a full five years of development time, it must be said that this Skate reboot has underperformed relative to expectations. While the core controls feel solid and many quality new features have been added to the series' gameplay, issues such as mandatory always-online connectivity, aggressive monetization design, and slow feature updates have significantly held it back. In fact, even former developers feel the game should not have launched in its current state.
Earlier today, the official Skate account announced that the series' iconic mode of the same name, "S.K.A.T.E.," will finally be added to the game on December 1. Many players pointed out that this mode is the soul of gameplay for both the series and skateboarding games in general, yet it took over a full year to implement.
This tweet also caught the attention of former developer Adrian Campos. He previously served as a Senior Environment Review Artist on the title before being laid off earlier this year. Campos retweeted the trailer for the S.K.A.T.E. mode, stating, "Honestly, I really wish we had spent another year polishing the game," clearly lamenting how long it took to implement this mode.
Some comments stated that it was absurd for a skateboarding game to launch without the S.K.A.T.E. mode. Campos agreed with this sentiment, noting that with more development time, the final product would have been "much more complete." When a fan mentioned that five years had passed since the initial announcement, leading them to believe development was well underway, Campos echoed the feeling: "Believe me, I thought the same thing when I first joined."
Since its Early Access launch, players have consistently made it clear that the game was not ready for release, especially given the inclusion of numerous microtransactions. It is somewhat surprising to see even the developers internally agree with this assessment. Unfortunately, what's done is done; we can only hope that Skate gets enough time to polish the game properly for its official 1.0 release.