The Mount & Blade: Warband Viking Conquest Reforged Edition is a "monumental update" to last year's DLC release that incorporates a number of new features including "The Last Tuatha De Danann", an all-new story set in the dark, mysterious fantasy realm known as Ireland.

A full breakdown of what's included in the Reforged Edition is up on the TaleWorlds website, with high points including the Hofs of the Nordic Gods, where players can recruit powerful but unpredictable Berserker troops; a faithful canine companion; "Labour mini-games," in which you give up all that raping and the pillaging in favor of an honest day's work in a quarry or on the farm; new quests, events, and items; an Ambush System; and significant changes to multiplayer. 

"We are very excited to be releasing Viking Conquest Reforged Edition today as a service to our players and fans!" TaleWorlds said. "Our friends and developers of the DLC, Brytenwalda, have been hard at work over the past few months creating this monumental update."

The Viking Conquest expansion, originally announced in October 2014, adds a single-player campaign to the game featuring, as you might have guessed, Vikings and conquest. I haven't played Mount & Blade: Warband myself, but Phil makes me think that I should: He said in November that while it's not the best-looking game ever, "it's an absolutely brilliant RPG-cum-strategy—filled with a multitude of freeform, sandbox options." The Mount & Blade: Warband Viking Conquest Reforged Edition is out now.

Believe it or not, it was five years ago today that StarCraft 2: Wings of Liberty inflicted itself upon our gaming lives. And if you don't believe it (because it sure doesn't feel like five years, does it?) then you can go check with Blizzard, which will not only confirm what I say but also toss you a few silly goodies to celebrate the big event.

First up, there's a very special (and very festive) fifth anniversary portrait up for grabs that can be selected by anyone playing StarCraft 2 between today and August 3. Worker units have also been modded up a bit, and for a limited time will explode in great, colorful blasts of confetti—confsplosions, you might say, although you might not, too, because it doesn't exactly roll off the tongue. A swanky fifth anniversary wallpaper has been added to the StarCraft 2 media section, and Blizzard said other "epic StarCraft 2 swag" will go up for grabs soon as well.

(Click the maximize icon in the upper right to make the magic happen.)

"Thanks for being a part of the great community that has made StarCraft II into what it is today. Here's to you, and the last five years of epic stories and gameplay!" Blizzard wrote. Get the details at Battle.net.

I passed it probably a dozen times during QuakeCon weekend: a closed door off the hotel's main thoroughfare, marked with a standing sign inviting attendees to take a break from the show. It certainly felt like a good idea: as friendly as the boisterous crowds of QuakeCon are, it's an easy place to become overwhelmed or anxious.

The AFK room, however, isn't just a spot for some peace and quiet amidst the amiable roar of the convention. It's a place for people who are in crisis to find help. Late Sunday night I spoke with Russ Pitts, co-founder of Take This, the charity providing and staffing the AFK room at Quakecon.

"It's not just a quiet room for us," said Pitts, a former games journalist and co-founder of Polygon. "We're a mental health awareness and education charity, so we don't want to have a room where it's not monitored or where people can't get more help than just a quiet space if they need it."

Take This was founded in 2012 by Pitts, game journalist Susan Arendt, and clinical psychologist Dr. Mark Kline, after freelance writer Matt Hughes took his own life. The idea for the charity arose from conversations between colleagues of Hughes, who were unaware that he had suffered from depression. "What kind of resources would we have wanted to create to help someone like Matt understand that it's okay to not be okay, it's okay to talk to people about these issues?" Pitts and others asked themselves. "And Take This grew out of that."

The first AFK room arrived at PAX East in 2014, and according to Pitts, they're now visited by roughly 500 people a day during PAX conventions. This is the first year QuakeCon has provided an AFK room, though I expect the practice will continue to in the future—Pete Hines, Vice President of PR and Marketing at Bethesda Softworks, is a member of the governing board of Take This. Pitts said the charity is also reaching out to other conventions. "We're talking to organizations like GenCon. We're going to have some kind of presence at DragonCon this year in Atlanta."

"Every time we do this, including here at QuakeCon, we have people come in who are in states of extreme duress, who are experiencing emergent crisis of some kind, whether an anxiety attack or panic attack or suicidal ideation." As a result, Take This provides access to trained professionals for event attendees, and also provide training to convention staff and volunteers on mental health awareness.

Due to the variation of laws from state to state, Take This doesn't offer services or therapy in the AFK room, but instead provide information about how and where visitors can find local help.

"As far as mental health goes, the legalities are different in every state, "said Pitts. "We don't do clinical services here, we don't do therapy in the room, we don't diagnose in the room, but our clinicians do offer people advice about local resources, and they're trained in therapy so they know the difference between having a conversation and dispensing therapy. So, they know where to stop."

You can learn more about Take This at their website.

Built-in Qi wireless charger and AMD FreeSync technology

Samsung launched on Monday the world s first monitor, the SE370, that offers built-in wireless charging for phones and tablets. The company is offering the SE370 in two sizes, 23.6 inches (S24E370DL) and 27 inches (S27E370DS), that are compatible with the Qi wireless charging standard developed by the Wireless Power Consortium.

Outside the difference in sizes, both monitors provide the same features: a 1920x1080 resolution, a 4ms response time, 178-degree viewing angles, and a typical contrast ratio of 1000:1. Connectivity options include one HDMI 1.4 port, one DisplayPort 1.2 port, and one D-Sub port. However, these two monitors have different brightness levels: 250 cd/m2 (23.6 inch model) and 300 cd/m2 (27 inch model).

Through the integration of wireless mobile charging technology, our innovative SE370 monitor dramatically improves efficiency, convenience and connectivity at home and at work—representing another significant milestone in our long history of industry—firsts, said Seok-gi Kim, Senior Vice President, Visual Display Business at Samsung Electronics.

These two monitors throw out the integrated USB charging ports for a circular wireless charging area that s built into the monitor s base. Customers with a compatible device merely place it within the circular area. Once a connection is established, an LED will light, signaling that charging has commenced. Additional information about Qi wireless charging can be found here.

In addition to the wireless charging feature, Samsung also pointed out on Monday that the SE370 includes an eye-saver mode that reportedly reduces eye strain by turning down the amount of blue light. There s also a flicker-free function that the company says reduces eye strain when the monitor is set at certain refresh rates.

For AMD-based PC gamers, Samsung has thrown in FreeSync technology. For the uninitiated, this built-in hardware syncs with the machine s AMD GPU or APU and adjusts the refresh rate to match the game s framerate. This eliminates screen tears, reduces input latency, and allows for a more fluid experience.

The monitor s game mode detects changes in scenes and instantly corrects blurry images, enhances colors, and alters contrast for improved visibility, the company said on Monday.

Unfortunately, Samsung did not provide pricing or availability. However, the company acknowledged that these two monitors are Windows 10 certified.

Image by Samsung Tomorrow

Think you're done with Geralt and his witchy gang? Think again. CD Projekt's final free DLC release for The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt will be a New Game Plus mode, a boon for players who have finished the game and want to take another spin without all of the attendant hassles.

New Game Plus, as defined by the oracle that is Wikipedia, "is an unlockable videogame mode available in some videogames that allows the player to start again a new game after they finish it at least once, where certain features in NG+ not normally available in a first playthrough are added, and where certain aspects of the finished game affect the newly started game, such as keeping in the new game items or experience gained in the first playthrough." This is relevant because CD Projekt hasn't specified what exactly The Witcher 3 New Game Plus will include.

"New Game+, the final DLC, is on the way and, of course, it s completely FREE!" the studio wrote on The Witcher Facebook page. "Stay tuned for more info regarding the release. It won t happen this week though—we need a little bit more time to finish it."

The image accompanying the post features a pile of weapons, armor, and other Witchering paraphernalia, suggesting that the NG+ will allow players to keep at least some of their hard-earned stuff. We've contacted CD Projekt to see if we can get a steer on what it's got planned, and we'll let you know what we find out.

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Razer has confirmed that it has acquired Ouya's library and online distribution platform, and will transition them to its "more advanced" Forge TV micro-console.

Okay. This is not, strictly speaking, a PC gaming story, but Razer is primarily a PC company, and the Ouya's failure and subsequent absorption—the acquisition actually took place on June 12—will have a direct impact on Forge TV, Razer's streaming box that we previewed in January. "The entire point of the device is streaming from a more powerful PC," we said at the time. But the Ouya move suggests that Razer has bigger plans for couch-based gaming.

"Ouya's work with game developers, both triple A and indies, went a long way in bringing Android games to the living room and Razer intends to further that work," Razer CEO Min-Liang Tan said in a statement. "This acquisition is envisaged to usher more developers and content to the Android TV platform."

Ouya's technical and developer relations teams have joined Razer, and the Ouya name will be maintained as a separate publishing arm for Android TV and Android-based console games. But it did not acquire the rights to the actual hardware, which will now presumably be left to wither and die, and eventually become a niche collector's item. Ouya founder and CEO Julie Uhrman, who Kickstarted the console in 2012, is also out. "Can't wait to see what you do," she tweeted at Razer earlier today. "Take care of my incredible team and community...I know you will."

.@Razer Can't wait to see what you do. Take care of my incredible team and community...I know you will.

— Julie Uhrman (@juhrman) July 27, 2015

Razer will re-launch the Ouya store as Cortex for Android TV. Existing Ouya owners will be provided a "clear path of migration" to Forge TV, which will include transferring their Ouya accounts and games to the re-branded platform and "deep discounts" on purchases of Razer hardware.

Major flaw in Android

A mobile security firm is sounding the alarm on a flaw in Android that could potentially allow an attacker to gain control of a smartphone simply by sending a text message. What's scary about the threat is that in many cases, it doesn't require any interaction on the part of the victim -- in theory, an attacker could send a specially crafted media file by way of MMS to an Android phone while the owner is sleeping, take control, and delete the message before it can be seen. The user would continue to use his or her smartphone the next morning, not knowing that it's been compromised.

That's according to Zimperium, which has dubbed the exploit Stagefright. The firm said its VP of Platform Research and Exploitation discovered the flaw deep in Android's code base, and while it hasn't been exploited yet, the firm says it affects 95 percent of Android devices. Pretty scary when you consider than nearly 80 percent of all the smartphones in the world run Android.

"Android and derivative devices after and including version 2.2 are vulnerable. Devices running Android versions prior to Jelly Bean (roughly 11 percent of devices) are at the worst risk due to inadequate exploit mitigations. If Heartbleed from the PC era sends chill down your spine, this is much worse," Zimperium stated in a blog post.

Zimperium says it reported the vulnerability to Google along with patches, and that Google promptly applied those patches to internal code branches. However, it could take a long time before the majority of Android users are safe from the exploit.

"For the mobile devices without zIPS protection, fixes for these issues require an OTA firmware update for all affected devices. Such updates for Android devices have traditionally taken a long time to reach users," Zimperium added.

Furthermore, devices older than 18 months may never seen an update at all.

Android device owners who use Google's Hangout app for text messaging are the most vulnerable. As Zimperium explained to NPR, an attacker could hide malware inside a short video and text it to an Android device. When it's received, Hangouts instantly and automatically processes the video so that it's ready for viewing in the phone's gallery. This is how malware can sneak in without any user interaction.

For Android device owners using the default messaging app, they'd have to view the text message, though still wouldn't be required to play the video for the malware to be installed.

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Major flaw in Android could affect 95 percent of devices

A mobile security firm is sounding the alarm on a flaw in Android that could potentially allow an attacker to gain control of a smartphone simply by sending a text message. What's scary about the threat is that in many cases, it doesn't require any interaction on the part of the victim—in theory, an attacker could send a specially crafted media file by way of MMS to an Android phone while the owner is sleeping, take control, and delete the message before it can be seen. The user would continue to use his or her smartphone the next morning, not knowing that it's been compromised.

That's according to Zimperium, which has dubbed the exploit Stagefright. The firm said its VP of Platform Research and Exploitation discovered the flaw deep in Android's code base, and while it hasn't been exploited yet, the firm says it affects 95 percent of Android devices. Pretty scary when you consider than nearly 80 percent of all the smartphones in the world run Android.

"Android and derivative devices after and including version 2.2 are vulnerable. Devices running Android versions prior to Jelly Bean (roughly 11 percent of devices) are at the worst risk due to inadequate exploit mitigations. If Heartbleed from the PC era sends chill down your spine, this is much worse," Zimperium stated in a blog post.

Zimperium says it reported the vulnerability to Google along with patches, and that Google promptly applied those patches to internal code branches. However, it could take a long time before the majority of Android users are safe from the exploit.

"For the mobile devices without zIPS protection, fixes for these issues require an OTA firmware update for all affected devices. Such updates for Android devices have traditionally taken a long time to reach users," Zimperium added.

Furthermore, devices older than 18 months may never seen an update at all.

Android device owners who use Google's Hangout app for text messaging are the most vulnerable. As Zimperium explained to NPR, an attacker could hide malware inside a short video and text it to an Android device. When it's received, Hangouts instantly and automatically processes the video so that it's ready for viewing in the phone's gallery. This is how malware can sneak in without any user interaction.

For Android device owners using the default messaging app, they'd have to view the text message, though still wouldn't be required to play the video for the malware to be installed.

Follow Paul on Google+, Twitter, and Facebook