Skate dev announces layoffs days after breaking paywall promise and announcing more aggressive monetization, but "our work on skate. continues"

The Skate team at EA has been hit with layoffs just days after announcing a more aggressive form of monetization coming to the game with season 3 on March 10.

You can read all about Skate's new microtransactions here, but essentially EA has broken a promise not to lock map areas behind paywalls by locking a map area behind a paywall, and in another PR self-own, it's also come up with a new type of microtransaction that'll let you rent access to the new area for a limited time using earnable in-game currency.

As if things couldn't get grimmer, EA has now announced an unspecified number of layoffs at Full Circle, the studio behind the Skate reboot.

"As skate. continues to evolve, we're transforming as a studio," reads an announcement on EA's official website. "We're reshaping Full Circle to better support skate.'s long-term future and focus the team on the things that matter most to you – and making those things great.

"These shifts mean making changes to our team structure, and some roles will be impacted."

EA has been one of the big companies at the forefront of what has now become a years-long industry restructuring resulting in thousands of redundancies. Following EA's $55 billion deal to go private last September, the company's leadership assured there would be no "immediate" changes to jobs. Sadly, it seems we've now left the safety net of that immediacy some five months on. Still, Full Circle has pledged to grease up the trucks on its skateboard and roll forward with a smaller team.

"Our work on skate. continues. We look forward to working with you as we move faster, listen more closely, and deliver consistently for all of you," it says. "Our commitment to skate., and to the millions of players who believe in it, remains strong."

In the meantime, here are some of the best sports games you can play right now.