If you’re complaining about jumping between Steam, Origin, uPlay, and whatever other launchers/marketplaces/libraries for games you’re forced to use, you aren’t alone. A group of volunteers has united to develop a new piece of software that brings all those things together peacefully.
Introducing Project Ascension, the program that plans to remove all the hoops gamers are forced to jump through.
Acting more or less as a glorified browser extension, the open-source Ascension will unite the libraries, stores, communities, and news feeds of all the various launchers players use. It boasts features like the capability to display sales from across these platforms. This all seems fresh and exciting, but it’s not the first attempt at this sort of software and it comes with its own set of issues.
First and foremost is the argument against superfluous launchers. If even one of your other launchers doesn’t want to work with Ascension, it really defeats the purpose. Then there will always be issues surrounding the very fact that you have a launcher for your launchers. It tends to sound like a shoddy workaround when explained so plainly, but hopefully the point is clear. It comes down to calculating whether it really saves you any time and frustration or will end up causing more than that when you hit your first error and realize how many dozens of loose ends you left undone. Software like this tends to come with a lot of patch-specific bugs, compatibility issues, and even security risks.
Regardless, it may be the way of the future. With EA and Ubisoft feeling so compelled to compete with Steam, it’s possible that they’re just the first of many and that we could one day see the market grow into a pool of individual launchers and digital marketplaces. While this means finding a sale would become easier and easier, it would certainly pave the way for software like Ascension to really come into their own.
For those of you interested in learning more, check out the link in the beginning to the official Project Ascension website. If the development goes as planned, expect to see a public beta available Fall of this year (2015).