After 15 long years, the skate franchise is back with a new title – and Electronic Arts is keen for us all to know that it absolutely isn’t Skate 4. Stylised as skate. (yes, with the period), the early access skateboarding sim lets you grab your deck and glide around San Vansterdam on four wheels.
Even if you weren’t already aware of the franchise, you’ve probably found your For You Page flooded with bugged boarders literally flying around the city, along with tutorials on how to land that perfect hardflip.
The footage isn’t just reflective of TikTok trends, but of an actual, decently-sized playerbase. At the time of writing, both PlayTracker and Gamalytic estimate that around two million players have already grabbed skate. since its release on September 16th.
It’s only natural that skate. would find fast popularity and virality, what with it belonging to such a well-known series and all. Alongside, of course, the fact that it’s free-to-play.
Yep, you can grab skate. on PC, Xbox, and PlayStation absolutely free of charge. However, if you want any DLC, you’re going to need to cough up.
Sound familiar? Yeah, I thought so too.
Loads of loot
If you want new clothes or boards, you’re going to need to be ready to drop virtual currency on them. Of which there are two kinds: Rip Chips and San Van Bucks.
Rip Chips are innocuous enough. You earn them by completing quests, like performing tricks around town. Who knew Ollies could be so lucrative? You can then spend your hard-earned Chips on special cosmetic items.
Meanwhile, San Van Bucks can only be bought with real-life money. You’ll be able to buy individual cosmetics or bundles of them as a kind of loot box situation. 500 San Van Bucks will set you back by £4.49. Or if you feel like splurging, you can get 12,000 of them for £87.99.
It makes for expensive skateboarding, that’s for sure. I mean, you can pick up a real starter board for around £30. Admittedly, you won’t be able to fly on it, but you get my point.
When I heard about this, I was immediately reminded of the model EA uses for their other major simulator: The Sims 4.
Yes, I appreciate that ‘guy who plays The Sims too much is reminded of The Sims’ doesn’t necessarily sound convincing. Hear me out, though.
The Sims 4’s Base Game is technically totally free-to-play, and has been since 2022. But if you want any extra features (including some fairly baseline ones, like, y’know, the general concept of rain), then you’re going to need to be ready to drop cash on it.
Admittedly, new DLC in The Sims 4 isn’t provided as loot boxes. For all their faults, you always know exactly what you’re getting. Despite that, the general playbook of play for free, then get rinsed by paid DLC remains noticeably similar.
Special events galore
Another clear similarity between skate. and The Sims 4 is their mutual use of time-limited events. Just recently, The Sims 4 launched the Forever Friends event. Meanwhile, skate. is shortly kicking off the Skate-o-Ween and 7-Ply Maple Harvest events, with a plan to run more later in the year.
Again, this isn’t a way that The Sims 4 has always operated. Events are relatively new, properly kicking off back in May 2024. Remember the Happy at Home Login Event? No, me neither. Apparently I still use the dartboard it unlocked, though.
The Sims’ and skate.’s similarities go deeper than DLC
The connection between the two franchises spans beyond The Sims 4 specifically, into the approach taken for The Sims more broadly. As a result, it could give us a glimpse into what the future of The Sims looks like.
EA has clearly emphasised that skate. isn’t a true sequel to its predecessor. Instead, it’s apparently the “evolution” of the franchise. I find this to be eerily similar to what they also said about Project Rene being a continuation of The Sims, rather than a direct sequel like The Sims 5 would be.
Honestly, skate. could be the Project Rene of the Skate series. Besides being at best a spiritual successor to other titles in the same series, it also has an emphasis on multiplayer modes, cross-platform compatibility, and eventually the option of playing it on mobile.
Could this approach be the new standard for EA’s sandbox games?
The Sims hasn’t always followed this free-to-play with paid DLC model. Sure, there have been free-to-play spin-offs, like The Sims FreePlay and The Sims Social. The mainline series, however, was always a paid-for Base Game followed by additional Expansions.
Even The Sims 4 specifically hasn’t always been like this. The Base Game was sold at an actual price for eight whole years. Giving The Sims 4 away for free is a relatively recent tactic that EA has pivoted to, presumably to grow The Sims 4’s player base and, in turn, the revenue turnover from DLC.
You can see a similar pattern with Skate. Generally, a title would launch with a paid-for Base Game. Then, paid-for DLC would eventually follow a little further down the line. Now, both series have pivoted completely by getting you to spend money on something that’s otherwise free.
Of course, neither setup is completely unusual. Live service games with microtransactions and loads of DLC are massively common, while many paid-for titles still end up with additional DLC further down the line.
Despite that, it doesn’t change the fact that neither franchise used to follow this strategy, and has adopted it in more recent years. And the similarities in messaging around the two titles – from the same publisher, no less – are hard to ignore.
Do these tactics make for an enjoyable player experience?
There are pros and cons to this model, that’s for sure. On one hand, being able to play for free is fantastic. It makes the title more accessible to a wider audience of players, who might not otherwise be able to afford it. Plus, it being free makes the bugs – of which skate. and The Sims 4 have plenty – a little less agonising.
From that angle, it’s a win/win.
On the other hand, bloating any game with massive volumes of paid-for DLC isn’t great, nor is it accessible. It can lead to whole features being paywalled, and has for the entirety of The Sims 4’s lifespan. Plus, too much additional content can make some setups struggle to run it at all.
Paid-for content can also make it easy to accidentally overspend in the name of completionism. When was the last time you actually used Bust The Dust in any way that mattered? And let’s not even get started on the potentially addictive nature of loot boxes…
In the case of The Sims, DLC bloat even played a role in why EA shied away from developing The Sims 5. Meaning that spending too much time pumping extra content into one title could actually stop us from playing the next incarnation of a series we enjoy.
Do we really want more clothes for our Sims to wear, or to skate around with a board we grabbed from a lucky dip? Or do we just want a new release entirely?
