"In a sense CDPR already got what they wanted".

Image credit: CD Projekt RED

The creator of Cyberpunk 2077’s R.E.A.L VR mod, which was taken down earlier this week following a DMCA strike by CD Projekt Red, has stated that he’s being punished by pirates sharing his mods online.

In a statement to IGN, who reached out to creator Luke Ross asking he would consider making the Cyberpunk 2077 mod free, he responded by saying that it would take a considerable amount of work, and that he believed there was little point in doing so thanks to rampant piracy.

"I do not rule out releasing the mod free for everyone [...] but it would take time, because my software supports 40+ games and various completely different engines, which makes creating a version that specifically supports only Cyberpunk 2077 a non-trivial task. Also, the people who have voluntarily given their money to me in order to support my development efforts for the framework might not be happy about seeing the mod being given away all of a sudden to everyone just because I’ve been bullied into it."

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Ross continued, stating: "Anyway, it’s kind of become a moot point, because following to the unexpected DMCA strike, after the mod was forcibly removed from my Patreon, people afraid of losing VR support for their favorite games have started pirating and illegally exchanging the mod all over the Internet, brazenly saying that since I was not complying with CDPR’s ToS, my work is now fair game and I should be punished by having it stolen. So in a sense CDPR already got what they wanted."

The mod itself wasn’t the reason why Ross received an NDA, rather its availability behind a Patreon paywall behind several other R.E.A.L VR mods Ross has created over the years. This, according to CD Projekt Red, broke its ‘fan guidelines’ document, which prevents selling content derived from CD Projekt’s works for money.

The company also stated, in a document shared by Ross, the following: "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)"

Ross publicly pushed back against this, writing on his Patreon page: "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 visualising 40+ games in fully immersive 3D VR was somehow built making use of their intellectual property".

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