Cyberpunk 2077 VR mod disappears after mod maker decides he'd rather take it down than make it free

The maker of the popular R.E.A.L. VR mod for Cyberpunk 2077 has accused CD Projekt of "iron-clad corpo logic" after the studio issued a DMCA demanding the mod's removal.

"Many of you have noticed that two of my recent posts disappeared about a week ago," mod maker Luke Ross wrote over the weekend on his Patreon. "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 SA 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."

Ross is the maker of R.E.A.L. VR, which is essentially a mod framework that brings VR support numerous games, including Elden Ring, Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora, Far Cry 4-6, Marvel's Spider-Man, Star Wars Outlaws, and others. All very cool: The problem is that if you want the mod, you have to subscribe to his Patreon, and charging money for mods is something that most big publishers—including CD Projekt—take issue with. The Take-Two comparison in Ross' message arises from that company's DMCA claims against the R.E.A.L. VR mod for Grand Theft Auto 5, Red Dead Redemption 2, and the Mafia trilogy in 2022.

"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," Ross wrote.

"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)."

For the record, the R.E.A.L. VR mod is popular and apparently very lucrative: A 2022 report by The Verge said Ross (not his real name) was earning more than $20,000 per month from the mod.

Some of the responses to Ross' post on his Patreon page are critical of CD Projekt, and urge followers to write the company and ask that the takedown request be lifted. Others point out that he could simply release the Cyberpunk 2077 mod standalone, for free, with an optional button for donations.

There appears to be even stronger pushback on the Virtualreality subreddit. "This is not the first mod the modder had taken down because he tried to make a live service out of it," Frraksurred wrote. "He knew he was outside the ToS and just chose to get away with it as long as he could. Now he's trying to play the victim."

Redditor ottermoment also made a not-flattering comparison between the Cyberpunk 2077 takedown and the disappearance of those VR mods for Rockstar games.

"'By the corpos' who created everything and they clearly say that paid mods aren't allowed," redditor MotherFunker1734 added. "Mods aren't a profit machine. Not everything has to be made for profit. No, he doesn't have to get paid 100,000 times for something he wrote once using someone else's code."

Taking the donation route would almost certainly be fine. CD Projekt has historically been supportive of modding, but the first "golden rule" of its fan content guidelines is "no commercial usage," and describes almost exactly what Ross is doing with the R.E.A.L. VR mod: "We’re happy for you to accept reasonable donations in connection with your fan content, but you’re not allowed to make people pay for it or have it behind any sort of paywall (e.g. don’t make content only available to paid subscribers)."

Even so, Ross admitted to being "bitter" about the takedown, "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."

Despite that obvious anger, Ross said he wanted to end his message on a positive note, which he did by announcing that R.E.A.L. VR now supports Baldur's Gate 3. I guess we'll see how Hasbro feels about this sort of thing soon enough.