The good news, according to a newly posted FAQ (via ShackNews) is that EA’s upcoming skateboarding sim Skate is still on track for early access release sometime in 2025. The bad news, alas, is that it will require a constant internet connection to play, and an offline mode won’t be offered.
“The game and city are designed to be a living, breathing massively multiplayer skateboarding sandbox that is always online and always evolving,” the FAQ states. “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.”
History gets a little hazy when you reach a certain age, but I feel like concerns over always-online requirements have waxed and waned over the years, as better-than-dialup internet connections have become a lot more accessible than they were, say, 15 or 20 years ago.
There’s been a renewed interest in the topic recently, though, most visibly driven by Ubisoft’s decision to shut down The Crew. The backlash to that decision has resulted in legislation, a lawsuit, a new Steam policy, and a broad-based pushback against the erosion of ownership.
And that’s where Skate’s always-online requirement becomes an issue: Bully for you if you have a super-fast, rock-solid internet connection that never gives you a moment’s grief, but that means nothing if and when (and let’s be honest, it’s when) EA decides to pull the plug.
Former PC Gamer writer Nathan Grayson summed it up aptly: “If server upkeep becomes a strain on bank accounts, then severing the server is an option (at least in some cases). But that takes work—especially when games are increasingly designed around the online requirement, and some games can’t survive a server-ectomy procedure.”
He wrote that, by the way, in 2011—this is neither a new problem for the industry, nor one it’s figured out how to address effectively. In most cases, game servers are taken offline, some number of people get a little angry about it, and we all go on with our lives.
But with sentiment against that approach coalescing into something more than just online grumbling, it’s a little surprising to see a major publisher so blithely insisting on an always-connected requirement without also committing to a failsafe plan for when the servers go away, or at the very acknowledging the inherent limits of that design: No offline mode means no game, and you should govern yourselves accordingly.
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