20 Recent Video Games That Were Sent Out To Die
12. Skate
There was huge initial excitement when a fourth entry into the Skate franchise was announced, though it cooled somewhat when EA confirmed it would be a free-to-play title, prompting many fans to skeptically consider how EA of all publishers would monetise it.
Compounding this was the subsequent announcement that Skate would be always-online, meaning there was no way for players to experience the game offline and in the event that EA shut the servers down, Skate would be functionally dead.
Skate finally launched in early access last September, where it received extremely mixed reviews from critics and players alike.
And though it peaked at an impressive 134,000 concurrent players on Steam at launch, that number swiftly dwindled to the extent that it lost 90% of its player-base within two months.
Ultimately Skate just wasn't what most fans of the series wanted - a live service game with microtransactions and little meaningful content that felt like an aggressively corporate shadow of the original trilogy.