The dust has finally started to settle following the head-to-head confrontation between the PC community and Valve. For those who have been living under a rock the past few days, Valve decided to introduce paid mods into the Steam Workshop, starting with Skyrim. Then, a handful of days later, they scrapped the idea completely after the PC community made it clear where they stood on the subject. PC players have been celebrating the triumph of the consumer and all has returned to normal. Or has it?
It comes as no surprise that the vast majority of the PC populace did not immediately forgive the company for its attempted integration of such a business model. A fair portion of those who still feel wronged by Valve have decided to take matters into their own hands to prevent a similar situation from arising in the future. At least, the plan is to take away a portion, albeit small, of the overwhelming power this group of gamers so willingly gave to Valve/Steam before all of this. The conversations led to a solution that the PC Master Race subreddit agreed on almost unanimously: a new open-source game launcher created by the community.
Say hello to Project Ascension. The community-driven project aims to combine multiple storefronts (ex: GOG and The Humble Store) and games across different clients into one, easy-to-use launcher. Project Ascension has already seen some mock-up designs (here, here, and here) hit the web, giving us a glimpse at what may come to be one day should these developers continue their efforts.
Would you use Project Ascension as an alternative game launcher? Let us know what you think of the PC community’s undertaking.
