Cyberpunk 2077 VR mod has been taken down by CD Projekt Red

The DMCA hammer slams down on modder

There are several great Cyberpunk 2077 mods out there, but a fan-favorite comes from modder LukeRoss, whose mod allowed players to experience Night City in VR. Well-loved as it was, not even that could stop a DMCA strike coming from Cyberpunk's developer, CD Projekt Red.

However, this wasn't an unnecessary show of force from the studio. It comes after the R.E.A.L VR modder LukeRoss refused to make his mod, priced at $10, free for everyone, even after CD Projekt Red asked him to do so.

LukeRoss is well-known for making money via modding and, according to a 2022 report from The Verge, earns a healthy $20,000 a month by modding PC games to run on VR headsets. The mods are locked behind a Patreon, which you need to subscribe to. It's a practice that concerned CD Projekt Red, with Jan Rosner, VP of business development, stating that they issued the strike against LukeRoss because the mod violated fan content guidelines, which require mods to be free.

In a tweet, Rosner states, "We are big fans of mods to our games — some of the work out there has been nothing short of amazing, including Luke’s mod for Cyberpunk 2077. We’d be happy to see it return as a free release. However, making a profit from our IP, in any form, always requires permission from CD Projekt Red."

However, instead of complying with the studio's request, the creator doubled down and refused to make the mod free. Over on his Patreon, LukeRoss blasted the company for using "corpo logic." The full quote, posted via Synth Potato on X, can be seen below.

"Many of you have noticed that two of my recent posts disappeared about a week ago. I apologize that I could not comment personally about the fact, because there was an ongoing legal exchange.

Now that the dust has settled, I'm even more sorry to announce that we are leaving behind an adventure that so many of you deeply loved and enjoyed. CD PROJEKT S.A. decided that they would follow in Take-Two Interactive Software's steps and issued a DMCA notice against me for the removal of the Cyberpunk 2077 VR mod.

At least they were a little more open about it, and I could get a reply both from their legal department and from the VP of business development. But in the end, it amounted to the same iron-clad corpo logic: every little action that a company takes is in the name of money, but everything that modders do must be absolutely for free.

As usual, they stretch the concept of "derivative work" until it's paper-thin, as though a system that allows visualizing 40+ games in fully immersive 3D VR was somehow built making use of their intellectual property. And as usual, they give absolutely zero f***s about how playing their game in VR made people happy, and they cannot just be grateful about the extra copies of the title they sold because of that — without ever having to pour money into producing an official conversion (no, they're not planning to release their own VR port, in case you were wondering.)"

The bottom line is all that matters, and gamers be damned.

Am I a little bitter about all of this? Yeah, you bet I am. Especially in the same week when Meta pulls the plug on three major VR studios. Especially after four years during which I (together with other modders) spent so much time keeping our mods alive in spite of CDPR's constant breaking updates. Especially when they never even knew or cared during all this time that the VR conversion was there, and are only knee-jerk reacting now because somebody reported to them that it existed and it was not free."

Dismayed as LukeRoss appears to be, the fact that this isn't the first time he's been hit by a DMCA strike makes it seem unlikely he'll be deterred by CD Projekt Red's decision. After all, the creator has made VR mods for other games like FromSoftware's Elden Ring and Ubisoft's Far Cry 5. Most likely, LukeRoss will simply turn his attention to modding another game.