What's going on?EA released Skate (stylized "skate.") in early access in 2025: an online, free-to-play reboot of the popular skateboarding seriesA new fan-made "modding platform" called ReSkate makes Skate playable offlineReSkate also adds support for private servers, custom maps, and other modsReSkate had been downloaded 350K times as of TuesdayThe creators of ReSkate tell PC Gamer that they'll comply should a cease and desist demand come their wayEA's reboot of the Skate series is a free-to-play online game with mixed user reviews on Steam. Aspects of Skate are well-liked, but a common complaint is that it lacks the spirit of skate culture, exchanging grittiness for brand-name premium cosmetics and tidy-looking maps in an online-only ecosystem that prevents true DIY modding.Enter ReSkate, a new "modding platform" created (with AI assistance) by a pair of coders who go by zee_x64 and ReGlitched. The modders have experience with other custom server projects, namely R5Reloaded, which allows free-to-play shooter Apex Legends to be modded and played privately.In just a few days, ReSkate was downloaded from GitHub over 350,000 times. The software hooks into a particular version of Skate on Steam and allows it to be played offline, in custom servers, and with custom maps and other assets."Honestly didn't realize how big this was going to be," zee_x64 told PC Gamer over Discord this week. "We were just doing it for the love of the game."We were just doing it for the love of the game.zee_x64, ReSkate modderThe modders say they aren't trying to undermine Skate developer Full Circle or "replace the live game," and have no personal issues with Skate's microtransactions. "For me the game is free to play and they need to make money somehow to be able to keep developing the game," zee_x64 said.To that end, ReSkate will only work with the current version of Skate and isn't being promoted as a way to get premium content for free. Mods that unlock premium cosmetics are disallowed, at least in ReSkate's official channels.Still, ReSkate does allow us to download a free-to-play game and then break out of its walled ecosystem, adding our own cosmetics and custom maps, and playing it without the need for EA's servers and anticheat software, which also makes it playable on Linux via Valve's Proton emulation. (But does not make it possible to cheat in official servers, because ReSkate doesn't interact at all with EA's servers.)Lawyers have sent letters over less, and if EA comes knocking with a cease and desist order, zee_x64 says they won't put up a fight. But ReSkate is open source, and there are already over 70 forks on GitHub, so it may not be something that can be put back in the box.(Image credit: EA/ReSkate modders)The player responseOn the unofficial Skate subreddit, players are posting videos of custom cosmetics and maps—de_dust from Counter-Strike made it in immediately, of course—and debating what ReSkate's effect on the live game will be.Counter Skate 2 from r/Skate4One person is excited simply to have the option to choose any shirt color for their avatar. "The fact I can just open up a modding tool app; design the material type; design the colour; and not wait for the devs to release a specific version and wait for it to release on rotation is just great," they wrote.Others are less convinced that ReSkate is a boon, with some expressing sympathy for Skate's developers on the expectation that the platform will negatively affect the game's future. One popular comment speculates that EA could come to "see [Skate] as a failed experiment and shuffle resources elsewhere."At the time of writing, EA has not commented publicly on ReSkate.AI tools sped up developmentCustom server projects for defunct MMOs and long-running live service games have been a thing for a long time, but they aren't typically released while a game is still in early access. A 2026 wrinkle in this particular case is that the modders say development was substantially accelerated by AI coding tools."We used AI to help reverse [engineer] the game as I don't see any reason not to when the tooling exists," zee_x64 said. "Without it, it probably would of taken years to do the same thing … that also doesn't mean we blindly just prompted AI until it worked, we still had to use our previous knowledge to get it actually working."Antivirus flags complicate the installA heads-up for potential ReSkate downloaders: Windows antivirus doesn't like it, and you may have to create an exception for the file to avoid it being quarantined, an uncomfortable step despite the modders' assurance that it is a false positive."Some antivirus software may flag ReSkate because it uses techniques that can resemble malware, such as DLL injection, process/memory modification, and downloading files over HTTPS," says kushWRA1TH, a mod in ReSkate's Discord server. "These are used for its game-mod functionality and do not by themselves mean ReSkate is malicious."Even if ReSkate itself is not malicious, downloading and using it does carry a risk, as it could contain exploitable security flaws. (As can any software.)The modders note as well that they cannot vouch for every fork of the code, referring to versions created by people other than the original modders. As an open source project, ReSkate's inner-workings are available for anyone to analyze or modify.