There’s been tons of branding shifts, from Blizzard renaming its multiplayer game service Battle.net; Riot Games’ new title is a board game; and Ubisoft launching its very book publishing house to boost its cross-media brand power — all in this week’s TPOI!

Blizzard phasing out Battle.net branding

After 20 years, Blizzard Entertainment announced that it will be transitioning away from using the Battle.net name when referring to its online multiplayer game service due to some occasional confusion caused by the name. In a blog post in its World of Warcraft website, the developer claimed that the service isn’t actually going anywhere; it is just re-branding the system to fall under the umbrella of Blizzard technology. GamesIndustry.biz reported that the move away from Battle.net will take place over the next several months. The transition has already begun with Blizzard’s streaming and voice services, Blizzard Streaming and Blizzard Voice.

Riot Games Brings League of Legends to the Table with Mechs vs. Minions

League of Legends is getting a new spinoff soon — but it’s not a video game. Developer Riot Games is launching a new board game called Mechs vs. Minions, a 2-4 player co-op tabletop campaign set in the League of Legends universe. Development on the game began almost three years ago, with the entire project developed internally under Riot Games associate producer Chris Cantrell, says Geek & Sundry. The game will be exclusively sold at the Riot Games merch store and releases on October 13.

Ubisoft opens book publishing house to ‘propel’ brands forward

Ubisoft has created a Ubisoft Publishing, a new in-house book division, to publish books related to its biggest franchises. Gamasutra says the first project to come out will be a novel Assassin’s Creed: Heresy, due out November 15. Ubisoft has released several books based on its properties through Penguin Random House, Titan Comics, and Scholastic in the past.