EA’s long-awaited revival of the Skate franchise hit a major speed bump this week as its Early Access launch was marred by widespread server outages, long queues, and mounting frustration from eager players. The new Skate developed by Full Circle, officially entered Early Access on September 16, marking the first new entry in the series in 15 years. However, soon the excitement turned into disappointment as when the players tried to login they were greeted with error messages, infinite loading screens, and queues of over 50,000 users.
What went wrong
As per EA, the outage was caused due to overwhelming. The players when attempting to access the game were greeted with messages like ‘Server is under maintenance’ and error code 852146987, indicating a failure to connect to EA services. According to Downdetector, more than 15000 users reported issued in EA servers via the problem appeared isolated to Skate’s Early Access mode.The Developer Full Circle also acknowledged the issue and said, “We’re experiencing an ongoing outage and will enter immediate maintenance to fix the issue. We’ll keep you posted on updates”.
Always-online frustration
Adding fuel to the fire, Skate requires a constant internet connection, a design choice Full Circle had disclosed months earlier. The studio emphasised that the game is created as a “living, breathing massively multiplayer skateboarding sandbox,” but many players are now calling for an offline mode, especially in light of the unstable launch.
Demand surges, fixes incoming
Despite the outage, Skate saw more than 78,000 concurrent players on Steam at launch, ranking it among the platform’s top 10 most-played games. EA has since begun adding more servers to handle the load, and some players have reported improved access, though connection issues persist for many.As of now, EA has not provided a definitive timeline for full server restoration, but the team is actively working to stabilize the experience.