EA’s new Skate game–the first in 15 years–launched today into early access, and the free-to-play game is proving popular enough that players are facing server queues due to the player load. Developer Full Circle has now reacted to player complaints about server queues. At the same time, people are logging into the game to find it requires a constant internet connection–something Full Circle warned about months ago but isn’t going down well with the community today
Server queues
In a statement, developer Full Circle said there are “a LOT” of players trying to join the Skate servers today for launch, and that to mitigate the issues, server queues have been put in place. Full Circle said the studio is “on it” and will undertake efforts to improve wait times.
Server queues are nothing new for online games. EA’s own Battlefield 6 has server queues for its recent multiplayer beta, for example. They can still be annoying, though, as players understandably do not want to wait to play. Some people in the Skate subreddit have said they finally got to the front of the queue and joined a session, only to be kicked out due to server issues
Always-online complaints
The new Skate is an always-online game–something Full Circle disclosed back in April. At the time, the developer said this was necessary due to how the new Skate was designed.
“The game and city are designed to be a living, breathing massively multiplayer skateboarding sandbox that is always online and always evolving,” the studio said. “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.”
Full Circle added: “In order to deliver on our vision of a skateboarding world, the game will always require a live connection.”
But now that Skate has gone live, many are expressing frustration with the always-online requirement. Many posts in the Skate subreddit include people voicing their frustration with this, prompting some people to call on EA and Full Circle to release an offline mode.
Given what Full Circle has said about always-online being a core part of Skate’s design, that might be wishful thinking.
Skate is not 1.0 yet
The new Skate launched today as an early access product, meaning development is not finished and that, as with other unfinished games, there are going to be bugs and other oddities that players encounter. Full Circle has said it will pore over the feedback from the early access launch to try to improve the experience.
Steam stats
At launch, Skate has already surpassed 78,000 concurrent players on Steam, making it the No. 10 most-played game on Steam right now. And that’s just a fraction of the game’s total audience, as it’s also available elsewhere on PC and on PlayStation and Xbox consoles.