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Ascend

Ascend is Ascendara's optional subscription. It unlocks social, cloud, and automation features while directly supporting the solo developer behind the project. Ascendara's core features (downloading, installing, and playing games) stay free with or without Ascend. New subscribers can start with a free 7-day trial.

Supporting Independent Development

Ascendara is built and maintained by a solo developer. Unlike large companies with dedicated teams and corporate funding, Ascendara relies on its community to stay online and keep evolving. An Ascend subscription is the most direct way to support this work.

Subscription revenue keeps the servers running, maintains the API that powers the game index and downloads, funds cloud storage for user data, and pays for continued development. Every subscription helps keep the games indexed, the community thriving, and the project moving forward.

Premium Features

  • Friends and Chat: Send and accept friend requests, see when friends are online and what they're playing, set your status, and chat in real time. Messages from the last 7 days are kept.
  • Profile and Bio: A public profile with a bio, country, social links, level, playtime, and achievements. You can make your account private.
  • Public Leaderboard: Compare your stats with the community.
  • Cloud Library Sync: Sync your game list, playtime, and achievements to your Ascend profile, and restore them after reinstalling Ascendara or moving to a new PC.
  • Cloud Save Backups: Upload game save backups and restore them on another PC.
  • Library Backups: Back up and restore saves for your whole library with Ludusavi, and import cloud backups on another device.
  • Retro Cloud Saves: Back up your Retro memory cards and save folders to the cloud.
  • Expanded Emulator Presets: More consoles and emulator presets in Ascendara Retro.
  • Automatic Game Updates: Ascendara checks for game updates in the background and updates games with one click.
  • Unlimited Download Queue: Without Ascend, you can have 1 active download and 1 queued download. Ascend removes this limit.
  • Ascendara Companion: Monitor and manage downloads from your phone, tablet, or another computer. See Ascendara Companion.
  • Nexus Mods: Browse and download mods for supported games from inside Ascendara.
  • FLiNG Trainers: Download the correct FLiNG trainer for a game and launch it automatically with the game.
  • Upcoming Update Preview: See what's coming in the next Ascendara update.
  • Experimental Branch: Switch to the experimental release channel in Settings → App Branch to test features early.

Getting Started with Ascend

  1. Open Ascend from the navigation bar.
  2. Create an account with your email or continue with Google. Your email address can't be changed after the account is created, so check it carefully.
  3. Verify your email address.
  4. Start your free 7-day trial, or choose a plan.

Ascend accounts are separate from any other account you have. Ascend also requires the latest version of Ascendara, so keep automatic updates on.

Plans and Billing

After the trial, you can choose a monthly plan, a 6-month plan, or a one-time lifetime purchase. Current prices are shown in the app when you select a plan. Checkout and billing are handled by Stripe in your browser, and you can manage your subscription or view invoices from Ascend → Settings.

When your trial is about to end, Ascendara reminds you. If the trial ends without a subscription, your cloud library and synced data are deleted within a few days.

Discord Verification

Subscribers can verify their account on the Ascendara Discord server to unlock exclusive roles and channels. Open Ascend → Settings, join the Discord server, and run the verification command shown there. Verification only works for active subscribers.

Privacy, Security & Abuse Prevention

Ascendara takes the security of your account and the integrity of the Ascend service seriously. To prevent abuse of the subscription system, such as account sharing or repeated free trials, Ascendara collects a hardware identifier (HWID) from your device when you create an Ascend account.

The hardware ID is generated from components of your system and acts as a fingerprint for your device. It is stored securely on Ascendara's servers and used only for abuse prevention. It is never shared with third parties, never used for tracking or advertising, and never sold.

Because of this, each device can have one Ascend account, and each device can use the free trial once. If you have concerns about hardware ID collection or need to move your subscription to a new device, reach out through the Discord community.

Account Privacy

Turn on Private Account in Ascend → Settings to hide your profile details, games, and achievements from other users. Display names and bios are checked for inappropriate language. You can report other users from their profile.

Deleting Your Account

Open Ascend → Settings and select Request Account Deletion. Your request is processed within a few days and you're notified by email.

Source Builds

Ascend features are disabled when you run Ascendara from source without Firebase credentials. See Building from Source.