How Fans Memed Skate Back to Life — Creative Director Explains the 15-Year Wait
Skate fans are finally getting a new entry in the series: a live-service reboot simply called Skate will enter early access on Sept. 16. Deran Chung, senior creative director, told how the game only came together after years of the team splitting up, staying in touch, and waiting for the right moment — and, importantly, for fans to push for it.
Why it took 15 years
Chung said the team at EA Black Box burned out after shipping the first three games in quick succession. He was frank about the state of the team at the time.
“I won’t lie. At the end of Skate 3, I was pretty fried,” Chung said. “I was like — well, most of the team was like, we can’t do any more of these,” Chung said. “The turnaround from Skate 2 to Skate 3 was less than a year, if I remember correctly. And we came out and I don’t think people who were playing 2 even knew 3 was out or were ready. No one was opining for the next one! And so then we stopped and a bunch of people went different ways. I worked on Garden Warfare , et cetera, but having a new challenge was exciting and fresh to us, but it was only a couple years before I was like, Oh man, at some point we’re going to do something. And it was just kind of waiting for the right moment.”
How the original team stayed ready
Many developers split into different projects and companies, and EA Black Box eventually closed. However, former teammates stayed in contact and kept the idea of returning alive.
Chung said the team maintained regular meetups and an informal promise to drop everything if the moment came. “So many of us were from or in Vancouver and whether they stayed at the company or not, Vancouver is a pretty small city or the game developer pool is pretty small,” Chung said. “So we would see each other. We have an annual holiday called Skate Paddy’s Day where all the alumni, even back from 2005, we still every St. Patrick’s Day figure out a way of getting together, whoever can make it. And anyone who ever worked on a Skate game is part of the family. And so we would cross paths with each other and be like, ‘Hey, just so you know, I’m down. Just let me know.’ It was this crazy sleeper cell thing of game developers who are waiting to be activated to work on the new game.”
For context on the studio closure, see the reporting on EA Black Box shut down in 2013.
Fans, servers, and the “memed into existence” moment
Even while the team was apart, fans kept playing the old games. That persistence created technical work for engineers and signaled ongoing interest.
“Why won’t that game die? I keep having to repair the servers! Why are there so many people playing them!?” Chung said, recounting the odd maintenance burden on older online systems.
Eventually, widespread fan calls for “Skate 4” and other public moments convinced the team and EA that the timing was right. Chung described the return as coming from a natural groundswell rather than a manufactured campaign. “The way that the groundswell for the next gate kind of evolved felt natural. It felt right,” Chung said. “And to me it was about identifying that moment. This is it. This is the time to do it. And so whether it took four years, five years, seven years, whatever it was, it may have never happened or we could have missed the moment, and it could have passed. And so I was just able to identify this beat.”
Launch details and platforms
The new game, titled Skate, will launch into early access on Sept. 16. It will be available on PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Windows PC, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X.
According to Chung, the project only moved forward when the team and publisher agreed the moment and the fan interest aligned, and now players will be able to test it in early access this September.
