Skate studio Full Circle has been hit by layoffs, and the way that parent company EA has chosen to announce those layoffs will probably come as no surprise if you’re familiar with the standard corporate line on these things.
In an announcement post on the official Skate website euphemistically titled “Skate‘s Next Chapter”, Full Circle says it is “transforming as a studio” and “reshaping Full Circle to better support Skate‘s long-term future”.
Wouldn’t you know it, the way in which Full Circle is achieving this is by laying off staff. It’s not clear how many staff members are affected, but the studio says “some roles will be impacted” and that the employees being let go are “talented colleagues and friends”, blah blah blah.
In closing, Full Circle says its “commitment to Skate…remains strong”, and that it wants to “move faster, listen more closely, and deliver consistently” for players.
I’m sure I’m not the only one, but I’m finding this kind of corpo-speak increasingly tiresome. The bottom line, to me, seems to be that Skate is now underperforming hugely in terms of player retention, and the devs on the ground at Full Circle are first in the firing line.
A quick look at Skate‘s SteamDB numbers (which, admittedly, don’t take console players into account) shows a 24-hour player peak of 2,306 at time of writing, but considering the game enjoyed over 130,000 players at release, that’s a Highguard-level fall from grace.
Couple that with the recent decision to hide Skate‘s first map expansion behind a paywall (technically, at any rate), and it looks like Skate is on a bit of a downturn. Still, I’m sure the people being let go at Full Circle are the ones responsible for the decisions that led the studio here, right? Right?
If you do want to see what all of this is in aid of, you can play Skate right now for free on PC, PlayStation, and Xbox, although for how much longer that’ll be true is another question. Stay tuned for more.
