Skate games are making a comeback, but are they here to stay?

Maybe you've noticed, but now no matter what you see, skating is back.

While skateboarding games once dominated the gaming world in the 2000s, as the gaming industry's ambitions grew over the decades, the well seemed to have all but dried up. Recently, however, there has been a resurgence in skating competitions, with spectators including veterans and newcomers. It's safe to say that people are still interested in these types of games. With the release of EA Early Access version skate— the resurgence of a series that once took up a lot of space in the industry — and Well received release In Tony Hawk's Pro Skater remake, the once-dead genre seems poised for a comeback.

I first saw this resurgence a while ago while playing a completely different type of skateboarding game: a very chill longboarding game called driftwood. In Driftwood, you play as a very cool sloth who carves and bombs – in skating terms, “bombing” means riding down a giant hill –picturesque hillside. As someone who longboarded in high school, mostly cruising around the city, Driftwood took me back to the place that got me into skating in the first place—the wind blowing through my unprotected hair and the satisfying (not to mention casual) coolness I felt as I hurtled down abandoned roads and hills. Make sharp turns through crowds and traffic. It feels fitting, then, that this game reminds me why I love skating and also makes me see how many skating games have come out in the past few years.

The developer has been churning out a range of great games over the years, from the quirky SkateBird to simulators like the aptly named Session: Skating Sim. SkaterXL came out a few years ago, and Bomb Rush Cyberfunk landed with all the noise and aplomb of Hawk The first one succeeds 900– and with a sequel on the way – all the while the OlliOlli games continued to grow in size, content and style with each new version released, until Roll7’s unfortunate closure.

There's been no shortage of skating games keeping the dream alive, but with the return of Skate it feels like all areas of game development – indie, triple-A and AAA – are completely in the throes of the skating game renaissance.

So why are these games making a resurgence now? How does the gaming landscape of 2025 and the years before it lead developers to choose to revisit this part of gaming's past?

According to Jason Mann, one of the developers of Driftwood, the answer is very simple. “If I had to guess, it's probably that people who grew up with the Skateboarding and Tony Hawk franchises are old enough to be making their own games, or at least have more influence over consumer spending.” Given the timing, he's not entirely wrong. The Tony Hawk games first appeared on the market in the late 1990s, and the Skateboarding series began appearing about a decade later. The average kid who played both games would probably be able to work in the industry and do something about their apparent disruptions, the results of which we're seeing now. Given the industry's penchant for nostalgia and revisiting touchstones from the past, this seems like the safest bet.

Overall, I agree with this point of view. But while I find the resurgence in skating to be welcome, it also feels a bit like a tactical retreat at times. Maybe it's just me being cynical, but when surveying the state of the gaming industry, one has to wonder: What still works? In a time when the field is rife with layoffs and cancellations, it's natural to see a visceral nostalgia for the games a developer grew up on – games that are defined by their legacy due to their massive success and staying power. It makes sense for something like Skate to exist, reinventing a beloved property into a new live service model, even if it scares viewers.

For Jeffrey Spicer, the creator of “Session” at Crea-ture Studios, the resurgence reflects the popularity of skating culture itself. However, Spicer added that regardless of mainstream appeal, “there's always a core group of people who want a game that gives them the freedom and expression they need in real-life skating.” With so many different skating competitions coming out over the years, it's a sentiment that's hard to deny — a diversity he and Man happily embrace. It's especially interesting to see skateboarding mechanics showing up in unlikely places, like 2023's Outerloop Games' Thirsty Suitors, the recently released Sword of the Sea (which looks more like surfing, but we'll still take it!), and even last year's GameSpot GOTY, Metaphor: disproof.

Interestingly, the latter two games allow players to ride on swords. If I had a nickel for every time this happened, I'd have two nickels, which isn't much, but the weird thing is, it happened twice.

For Spicer, this looming specter of skating is likely because “the desire to compete in skating never really waned.” Mann echoed the idea, noting how previous Tony Hawk and Skateboard games had a “cult following that seemed to get a fair amount of social media engagement.” How many of us haven’t seen some of the popular short video A player hits an incredible Christ Air hit in Skate 3 to Pearl Jam's “Even Flow.”

Still, the growth of the skating game and its popularity is becoming apparent, with Spicer attributing it to a “growing player base” and their demand for more games. Fortunately, the moment feels ripe for those who might want to get into it, and the desire is clearly there. Mat Piscatella, senior director and analyst at market research firm Circana, confirmed that EA's Skate launch appears to be off to a “remarkable start.” Apparently, the series' free-to-play resurgence is “in the top 5 for total weekly activity” on most platforms that have reported numbers, putting its starting audience on par with giants like Fortnite and Grand Theft Auto. While it's typical for hit games to have massive releases, the achievement of a once-popular niche game in a franchise that hasn't released a single game in 15 years is somewhat rare, making Skate's debut a refreshing shock to the system.

Speaking of their once-dominance, Piscatella also said that when he was at Activision, “Tony Hawk games were like games like Call of Duty and Madden NFL are today: released once a year, with a loyal audience that buys new versions every year.” The challenge now, as Piscatella puts it, is how to turn these “pulses” (where a sporadic major release spurs interest and sales in a skating game) into a bursting point that translates into greater staying power. Maybe Skate can pull off that feat, but someone like Mann would also welcome more original games from other big franchises in the genre, as well as skating games with “full-fledged story modes” and more grit.

Whatever shape or form it takes, the developers I spoke to seemed enthusiastic. Spicer said it was not just skating becoming mainstream again, but their own job prospects that would “light the torch of skating for generations to come.”

“Whether it’s getting new kids onto a skateboard for the first time or veteran skaters dusting off their gear, skating has something for everyone.”