Last week, creator of the popular paid-access Cyberpunk 2077 R.E.A.L. VR mod Luke Ross found himself at the center of a growing controversy after receiving a DMCA notice from Cyberpunk developer CD Projekt, which claimed the modder was profiting from its IP. The studio had earlier requested that Ross make the mod free to download, but rather than submit to what he called “iron-clad corpo logic,” Ross instead made the VR mod unavailable.
Now, after receiving a second DMCA notice from publisher 505 Games over his VR conversion mod for Ghostrunner, Ross has opted for the nuclear option and removed access to all 40+ of his VR mods from his Patreon rather than distribute them for free.
Ross doesn’t blame Patreon for complying with the Ghostrunner DMCA, the email says, because “DMCA law is carefully worded to give infinite power to big companies, who only need to write on a slip of paper that they ‘believe’ their copyright has been infringed.” Which, to its credit, isn’t exactly disproven by the itchy DMCA trigger fingers that major companies have brandished over the years.
Many of those companies—CDPR included—have shown a willingness to leave modders unheckled as long as they aren’t directly receiving payments for modding the company’s software. But rather than following the typical protocol of making his mods available for free while directing grateful users to his Patreon as a form of donational support, the email says that Ross was “forced to take immediate action” of a different kind.
“I’m making unavailable all versions of the mods and also all the posts related to the wonderful work we have done here together for years, so that there will be no ground for further claims,” the email says. In its generosity, it also informs recipients that they “don’t need to unsubscribe” if they don’t want to.
https://t.co/OvnbcUqFVtCD Projekt was founded in May 1994 by Marcin Iwiński and Michał Kiciński. According to Iwiński, although he enjoyed playing video games as a child they were scarce in the Polish People’s Republic (which experienced political unrest, martial law, and goods…January 23, 2026
“Hopefully we’ll find a way together, in the next few weeks,” the email concludes. “But if we can’t, we’ll always have the memories of the wonderful times we spent in those beautiful virtual worlds.”
In the hours since the email was sent, Ross has tweeted a quoted section from CD Projekt’s Wikipedia page, which describes how founder Marcin Iwiński had previously sold cracked videogame copies in high school. If we’re meant to be keeping score, I’m not sure that wins anyone a point.
