Amazon Is Digitally Erasing Guns From James Bond Posters

Good morning! It’s Friday, and I’m so happy because today is my last day before I go off on a two-week vacation. But before I leave, I have one more Morning Checkpoint for you all. Yup, Kotaku’s daily round-up of news and other cool stuff is back again, and this time we’re looking into the rumored Halo remake, mourning the death of AOL dial-up, and preparing for so many damn games to launch in October. Enjoy, and I hope you get to go on a vacation very soon. You deserve it.

Amazon is erasing guns from old James Bond posters

Here’s something strange. Amazon, the new owners of the James Bond franchise, are allegedly digitally erasing guns out of old promo images of various Bond actors and using those censored images on Prime Video. This was documented by 007 fan blog The Spy Command, and it’s all really silly, with some images simply cropped to hide a gun and others changed more drastically. There’s also evidence that some of the images are being tweaked using AI tools.

**The rumored Halo remake is reportedly being developed by the Oblivion Remastered company**

As first reported by YouTuber Mr.Rebs and corroborated by XboxEra, the previously reported but not yet announced remake of the original Halo is allegedly being developed by Abstraction Games, a studio owned by Virtuous. Virtuous is the same studio that developed this year’s smash hit RPG, Oblivion Remastered.

Payday 3‘s promised offline mode has been canceled

Payday 3 launched in 2023 to negative reviews, and players flocked back to Payday 2 instead. Since then, the devs have been trying to improve the game. In June 2024, the studio behind the game launched a pseudo-offline mode that still required the internet. At the time, it was called a “stepping stone” to a true offline mode. Well, that’s not actually going to happen after all.

As reported by The Gamer, during a recent livestream, Payday 3 general manager Jonas Skantz confirmed that the studio wasn’t planning to make a true offline mode, claiming that adding the fan-requested feature “is not feasible for where we are going with the game.”

Five of the most wishlisted games on Steam are launching in October

We’ve talked a few times about how October is going to be a month packed with video game releases. And here’s more evidence of that. As spotted by PC Gamer, some of the most wishlisted games on Steam right now, including Battlefield 6 and Little Nightmares 3, are all launching in October. Good luck out there, folks.

AOL’s dial-up internet service is officially dead

*SCREECHING NOISES* *DIFFERENT LOUD NOISES* *DEEE DEEE DDEEEEE DOO DOO DOOOOOOO* Okay, finally online. Now to look up news about my internet provider AOL, and oh no….