EA's new Skate game is 100% online only, can't be played offline

EA's new Skate game will require an online connection in order to play, game developer Full Circle has confirmed.

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A new Skate is coming soon, but the sim has now been morphed into a live service game that's free-to-play and doesn't cost an upfront purchase. The flip side is that Skate will now be monetized with microtransactions, and is now an always-online game. The developers confirmed the news in a blog post, saying that Skate was built from the ground up as a digital world that gets updated over time.

"The game and city are designed to be a living, breathing massively multiplayer skateboarding sandbox that is always online and always evolving," Skate developer Full Circle said in a recent blog post.

The news isn't exactly a surprise given EA's penchant for live games, and Full Circle says that Skate playtesters were aware of the online requirements.

As for a release date, Full Circle still plans to launch Skate into early access "later this year."

Check below for the quote from the Q&A:

Will skate. have an offline mode?

The simple answer: No. The game and city are designed to be a living, breathing massively multiplayer skateboarding sandbox that is always online and always evolving. 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. That is probably not much of a surprise if you've been in our playtest.