Free and open-source cross-platform game launcher that aims to unify (not replace) different store clients (GOG Galaxy, Steam, Uplay, Origin) enters the scene as Project Ascension.

Besides open code, one of its main advantages will be allowing users to more easily compare prices and special deals among various digital distributors.

It is a community effort and public beta is expected this fall. In the meantime, you can check the following links:
▶ Project Ascension website
▶ GitHub repository
▶ Subreddit
▶ Twitch
▶ Introductory UI video

I do wonder how well received an idea like that can be. I mean there are people who like clients and the idea of all their games held together. While others only buy from one store, rendering this useless and others do not like clients altogether.
Then you have to wonder if the stores themselves would be so happy about being merged. Although GOG and Steam would probably not be too concerned. Origin and Uplay I would guess would to want to keep themselves apart from everyone else.

Time will tell I guess.

I think clients are the part of their bigger plans: Gaming OSs (e.g. SteamOS) and gaming-only pcs (console-like).

And in similarly relevant news, a Windows 95 exploit was just revealed. Users are advised to download the latest updates.

Looks nice, let's hope it comes out as great as it looks in demos.

I don't understand your point.

Ubisoft also have the same thing

hence it will be easy to thwart Ascension efforts if these company choose to.

(hint: your stuff is kind of old and you misunderstand them)

The first article you linked was from 2013 and the other from 1148 days ago. While this mistake works for creationists (doesn't but whatever), the rest of us aren't so keen on why you'd think security vulnerabilities are intentional and then not get fixed within 2+ years of them being known to the world. I think you can come up with better arguments to not use DRM platforms than that since it doesn't work on Windows users either.

True, but it should be noted that one, probably small portion of users shy away from clients because of their proprietary nature. Of all the encompassed apps, only Galaxy has any chance of ever becoming open-source too, so let's hope GOG will once again prove more trustful than others in the eyes of its customers.

Also, Linux users are left running gaming clients in emulated environment, Steam being the only exception at least until Galaxy for Linux comes out, and cross-platform compatibility of Project Ascension will change that, although it won't affect playing games under non-supported platforms for now. So those exploits haven't been patched still? If they're unintentional, wouldn't any serious developer fix them asap, both for theirs and their customers' sake?

While security vulnerabilities usually don't slip in on purpose, backdoors Gnostic mentioned most certainly do. And as witnessed in the case of Windows, they don't diminish with updates, on the contrary. Shocking, I know :D

A Qt project. Nice since it's cross platform. But why cmake and not qmake?

Nice.

Currently using Lutris although this looks more ambitious.

I was going to mention Lutris as well, but AFAIK that's Linux only.

So you want a more recent news of EA origin compromised?

But that is not my focus. My focus is EA / Ubisoft backdoor would allow it to easily mess up Ascension if they want. If I don't want Ascension to sync to Origin or Uplay, I simply update my client with some anti Ascension feature.

Here's an excerpt from Ascension developers' article titled <i>CMAKE me an API (or how we changed build systems and started our API)</i> where they explain this: Never heard of it before, superb tool! Thanks for the tip Lutgolhein (and Smannesman too)!

It seems like an advanced version of PlayOnLinux in the sense that they support backends other than Wine. Many of them in fact and they plan integration with GOG and Humble Bundle. Gaming on Linux never looked better!