{"id":19282,"date":"2026-03-01T18:41:07","date_gmt":"2026-03-01T18:41:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/gustavopineda.com\/?p=19282"},"modified":"2026-03-01T18:41:07","modified_gmt":"2026-03-01T18:41:07","slug":"full-circle-game-studio-announces-layoffs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gustavopineda.com\/?p=19282","title":{"rendered":"Skate developer Full Circle announces layoffs ahead of new game release"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/p>\n

Full Circle, the gaming studio behind the new iteration of Skate<\/em>, has recently announced a restructuring involving layoffs at its headquarters in Burnaby, British Columbia. Founded in 2021 as a subsidiary of Electronic Arts, Full Circle is just the latest in a series of AAA gaming studios to be hit by layoffs, with Ubisoft Toronto<\/a> laying off 40 employees last week.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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In their public-facing announcement, entitled \u201cskate.\u2019s Next Chapter<\/a>,\u201d the company lamented that the people affected by layoffs “are talented colleagues and friends who helped build the foundation of skate,” while shouting out the \u201ctens of millions\u201d of people who have explored the Early Access version of skate.<\/em> released last September. “To our departing teammates: thank you. skate. exists because of your hard work and dedication to the craft.”<\/p>\n

The original Skate <\/em>games were released in the late 2000s for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 and marketed as more realistic skateboarding games compared to the rival Tony Hawk\u2019s Pro Skater<\/em> series. Fans responded well to the tight controls, inventive city settings, and fun soundtrack, which won the first\u00a0Skate\u00a0<\/em>game the “Sports Game of the Year” award at the\u00a011th Annual Interactive Achievement Awards<\/a>, and resulted in commercial success, but the series had been on indefinite hold until the announcement of\u00a0skate.<\/em> (known among fans as Skate 4<\/em>), which was to be a live-service game built around a sandbox-style multiplayer experience, a move that didn\u2019t sit well with many long-time fans of the series.<\/p>\n

While the latest Skate <\/em>game has not yet had a final release, the Early Access version has been available to fans for almost half a year now, and early reviews are mixed. Critics have pointed to the inclusion of microtransactions ($25 clothing for your digital character), the online-only gameplay restriction, and the homogenized character design, while others have praised the free-to-play accessibility.<\/p>\n

We don\u2019t yet know how many employees lost their jobs at Full Circle, as the company was not forthcoming, but the parent company, EA,\u00a0lost approximately 5% of its workforce<\/a>\u00a0in 2024, during its last round of layoffs. As for the fate of skate.<\/em> after these layoffs, much is still unknown and the game still doesn\u2019t have a final release date.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

‘Skate’ developer Full Circle announces layoffs ahead of new game release<\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"registered_only","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[79,2,12,78,72,5,4,3,76,17],"tags":[87,89,88],"class_list":["post-19282","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ai","category-apple","category-artificial-intelligence","category-azure-openai-service","category-gaming","category-google","category-meta","category-microsoft","category-security","category-technology","tag-ai","tag-seo","tag-technology"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gustavopineda.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19282","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gustavopineda.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gustavopineda.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gustavopineda.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gustavopineda.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=19282"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/gustavopineda.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19282\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gustavopineda.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19282"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gustavopineda.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=19282"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gustavopineda.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=19282"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}