EA’s live-service reboot of Skate, which launched back in September, is continuing to expand and improve. The skateboarding game’s second season is out now, and fans mostly appreciate the new content and changes. But a lot of players aren’t happy about their in-game characters suddenly looking sick and tired after season two went live, with some jokingly referring to them as drug addicts or stoners.
On December 2, Skate season two went live on all platforms. The update adds cosmetic items, fresh areas to skate, a new trick (the Impossible), and a host of quality-of-life tweaks and visual changes. That’s all good and nice, and overall, fans are happy about the update, even if there are some odd lag issues at the moment. But many players were surprised to find their characters looking different, a bit more tired perhaps, when logging on Tuesday to play Skate. As part of EA and developer Full Circle’s commitment to improving Skate’s visuals, a lot of characters now have dark bags under their eyes and darker complexions.
“Why the faces look so tired and weird?” asked one Redditor on the Skate subreddit. Someone else joked that the new update had “Ghoul’d” their character. On Twitter, some replies to EA’s tweet announcing the new Skate update included more screenshots of characters that now look a lot more tired than before. One user shouted at EA: “Look what you did to MY FACE! Look at my face! Look at it!” Another player shared an image of their character with darker eyes and mentioned that the devs had previously promised to make characters look better and didn’t think that this update accomplished that.
You guys are not making any sense. pic.twitter.com/Rw5vhBi8fW
— Роман Платонов (@Roman__Platonov) December 2, 2025
Some players even claimed that they loaded up the game and found their character had a totally new skin tone. Looking across social media and Reddit and seeing all the images of characters looking different, it’s clear that something has changed, and a lot of people (not everyone, though…) aren’t happy about it. Some are even asking EA to revert the change to characters or add a toggle to let people go back to the more cartoony look seen when Skate launched earlier this year.
Kotaku contacted EA for more information.
I doubt EA will let people toggle between the old and new look, but with how often Skate has been updated and the devs’ commitment to listening to player feedback during the game’s early access development, I expect this won’t be the last time players boot up Skate and discover their characters look a bit different. Hopefully, next time everyone won’t look so tired.
