Its not a "merge"

It's a sale, they sold to Ascension, someone got paid

Ascension are their bosses now

It's not some kind of merge on equal footing, the epoch guys took the bag, and probably all should be fired anyway, as they can't run a server

All server infrastructure (hardware, performance, security, account handling, anti-cheat, etc.) is now 100% run by Ascension

Epoch is now embedded inside Ascension’s ecosystem — they’ve lost operational autonomy, and if Ascension wanted to, they could effectively control or even replace Epoch’s leadership down the line

• Accounts are being moved to Ascension’s systems and must use Ascension’s launcher. That’s a big operational shift — players will now go through Ascension to access Epoch.
• Moderation, support, and Discord management are being handled by Ascension staff. This is community control, not just tech support.
• Long-term, the dependency on Ascension’s tools, devs, and hosting means Epoch can’t really operate independently without them anymore.

It’s not a hostile takeover, but it’s definitely a soft acquisition in everything but branding

*By the way, i don't care, if anyway im glad as the Epoch team were completely incompetent in running a private server