// PC GAMER — GAMING
Skate has been de-live serviced by ReSkate, a modding platform downloaded 350,000 times—devs say they will comply if EA's lawyers come knocking
ReSkate makes Skate playable offline, and enables custom servers and maps. It's been an instant hit.
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EA's reboot of the Skate series is a free-to-play online game with mixed user reviews on Steam. Aspects of Skate are well-liked, but a common complaint is that it lacks the spirit of skate culture, exchanging grittiness for brand-name premium cosmetics and tidy-looking maps in an online-only ecosystem that prevents true DIY modding.
Enter ReSkate, a new "modding platform" created (with AI assistance) by a pair of coders who go by zee_x64 and ReGlitched. The modders have experience with other custom server projects, namely R5Reloaded, which allows free-to-play shooter Apex Legends to be modded and played privately.
In just a few days, ReSkate was downloaded from GitHub over 350,000 times. The software hooks into a particular version of Skate on Steam and allows it to be played offline, in custom servers, and with custom maps and other assets.
"Honestly didn't realize how big this was going to be," zee_x64 told PC Gamer over Discord this week. "We were just doing it for the love of the game."
The modders say they aren't trying to undermine Skate developer Full Circle or "replace the live game," and have no personal issues with Skate's microtransactions. "For me the game is free to play and they need to make money somehow to be able to keep developing the game," zee_x64 said.
To that end, ReSkate will only work with the current version of Skate and isn't being promoted as a way to get premium content for free. Mods that unlock premium cosmetics are disallowed, at least in ReSkate's official channels.
Still, ReSkate does allow us to download a free-to-play game and then break out of its walled ecosystem, adding our own cosmetics and custom maps, and playing it without the need for EA's servers and anticheat software, which also makes it playable on Linux via Valve's Proton emulation. (But does not make it possible to cheat in official servers, because ReSkate doesn't interact at all with EA's servers.)
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