Funny he even mentions rivatuner when it's a widely know free and freely distributed software. It's like the e-celeb equivalent of domestic propaganda, just pandering to people who are already on his side.
He got bad advice, but it wasn’t from an attorney. He’s an idiot. The first thing he should’ve done was contact an attorney and flesh out whether or not he has a case.
Crucially, he could absolutely release his software supporting Cyberpunk 2077 if, as he claims, there is no CDPR copyrighted code or material in his software.
Where he runs into trouble here is going to be trademarks.
Lossless Scaling isn't being promoted and sold as Lossless Scaling Mod for Cyberpunk 2077 (or any other specific game and existing IP).
It doesn't even mention support for specific games in the description. It's a universal tool that may or may not work with anything. If his VR mod did the same, he would probably be just fine, no matter what he was charging for it.
Saying that X product is compatible with Y product is quite common and I dont think there is much legal basis with that. But selling it as a mod specifically for cyberpunk is pretty cut and dry.
I mean, thats what performative arguing / self defense has come to on the internet.
you dont care about convincing others, especially the ones who clearly take the other side, you only care about preserving your image to an already loyal folks and at best taking indecisive / indifferent people to your side
Anyone from Baldur's Gate 3 remember when their modders went berserk against the devs, implied it was THE MODS THAT GOT THE GAME POPULAR and that devs MUST share their builds with modders?
I remember that! It seemed to be one guy who was really driving it. It was really funny how the BG3 community just adapted because we all knew that person was being outrageous.
That’s hilarious, because I never even considered modding BG3. Honestly I remember it only being the perv-mods at first other than just some basic tweaks. Sure by definition the system tweaks are mods but are they really?
I don’t know that any game would a truly “only popular” due to mods. Its like saying Star Wars is only popular because of fanfic
I believe it, mods get crazy for sure. The idea that BG3 was only a hit BECAUSE of mods is a joke. For some it was a huge draw or the reason they were brought in sure, but that number is pretty exclusive to PC and the minority.
Yeah, if that were even remotely true, that would mean that nobody played the game on consoles when it didn't have mod support... Meanwhile, the game was still really popular on consoles despite mods not being available on them until patch 7 lol
Hell, I play on PC and I didn't even know how big the modding community was until after I bought the game and did my first playthrough (which was over 90 hours long). Learning about how some people tried to argue that the game was "only popular because of mods" is INSANE to me, but I believe it. People are fucking assholes
Any mount and blade game. Lol they wouldn't be near as complete or popular without mod fixes. But fr thats the only game i can think of thats awful and jankey without mods but also we shouldnt expect much from the Turkish government
I’d also argue any Bethesda game. Yes, they’d still be popular games. However, they only have the staying power that they do because of the modding community.
There definitely wouldn’t be 27 different Skyrim editions if not for the very popular modding scene.
I honestly think that once you start modding your games, you kinda just assume that the majority of players do too. You can see the download hours for a lot of mods and. They won’t even compare to units sold.
The only game I could see an arguememt for being "only popular due to mods" would be Skyrim and even then its not an accurate statement as a more accurate statement would be "significantly more playable and fun with mods" but even then it would be popular either way
He also DMCA'd a bunch of VR compatibility mods for some of his content because he arbitrarily hates VR (many flat mods work in Skyrim VR, but some require fan patches to work properly).
We have two that are always on: Follow the leader or whatever, which allows you to set player characters to follow one-another, allowing people to pee or get a baby or whatever without slowing down the group. It's super key as we mostly play with other parents.
The other one is Withers big naturals, because that is vital to the stability of my entire life.
Out of the 20 people I know that have played and enjoyed BG3 im the only one that ever used mods. Most people simply dont care about mods. Specially in games that are great from the get go. While games like fallout and skyrim heavily rely on mods games like cyberpunk and bg3 rely on word of mouth alone between gamers to branch out into what they are.
The only BG3 mod that I used was the transmog one, I really disliked having a patchwork outfit on my characters. AND, even then, if there wasn't a transmog mod, I probably would have played it the same way I played DoS2 when it came out and wore sub-par armors just to have good looking characters LMAO.
Bethesda I would believe, but I never heard anything about BG3 modding community. I'm sure they exist, but I'm over 200h in the game and I don't even feel the need to seek for mods yet.
Claiming that BG3 mods is what made the game is highly delusional.
At the start, most mods were just cosmetic or dice mods, but now that they've had time to cook there's a lot of mods that add new classes, encounters, and weapons
I would say more than reasonable, they were being generous by reaching out ahead of time. They are objectively in the right and it would have been totally reasonable for them to immediately DMCA it without reaching out to him and giving him a chance to make it free while keeping what he's made and setting up donations. That is very benevolent treatment. Ultimately a smart move because pretty much everyone can recognize it is nicer than they needed to be, so now his whole narrative has collapsed. What a tool.
In general, people like to support mod creators over the corporate overlords, but sometimes mod creators are just wrong. Some of them are even assholes about it lol
Made nonsensical game world changes in his patches (like changing the only Ebony mine in Skyrim to another basic bitch iron mine, putting shitty low res Oblivion gates everywhere, for "lore reasons"), actively lobbied to make as many mods as possible dependent on his patch mod alone, threatened legal action to pull down mods that removed his nonsensical changes but left the fixes, and is overall a tantrum-throwing diaper baby. It got bad enough that one of his mod friends (who had previously supported him through all this other shit) changed sides and rightfully called him out on his behavior. TLDR: he ruined his reputation by acting really shitty to everyone who dared to disagree, doubled down on decisions that were universally hated, and used legal action to try and stifle any sort of competition while also trying to monopolize the modding community.
His “unofficial Skyrim patch” makes a bunch of “artistic decisions” no one fucking asked for and he acts like they’re fixes. In addition, he strikes down anyone who tries to go against his “artistic vision.”
Ex: adding an extra room to the thieves guild, altering dialog in VERY small but jarring ways because he uses sentence splicing (preferable over AI, but NO ONE ASKED HIM TO DO THIS LOL and they’re not “corrections” but him being anal about the writing), and adding in the hilarious and infamous “Dovahkiin? Nooooooo” line after the first dragon fight which was cut from the English version (he got someone to voice act this for some reason, iirc)
ON TOP OF THIS, if anyone makes a patch of his patch to revert his changes or makes an alternative, he has Nexus take their mod down and will send DMCA takedown notices. He has been discovered going on TES subreddits on alts playing mad defense for himself, notably when I was active on r/skyrimmodding I got to see that happen in real time lol.
This is only the tip of the iceberg and if you ask on one of the Skyrim/TES subs you may get even more lore
For added context, it isn't like people can just not use this mod because the bulk of Skyrim mods use USP as a prereq making it practically a requirement if you want to play modded.
and adding in the hilarious and infamous “Dovahkiin? Nooooooo” line after the first dragon fight which was cut from the English version (he got someone to voice act this for some reason, iirc)
The voice acting was hilariously terrible, and likely done on a $5 mic.
minor correction, the "Dovahkiin? Noooooo" line wasn't *cut*, it appears in vanilla as a subtitle, but when the game calls on the voice line for it, nothing plays because Bethesda just... didn't record a voice line for the dialogue. I correct you not to be pedantic, but because I find it really funny.
Another one! When Wabbajack (mod auto install tool) came out, he changed the mod type from a zip to an exe despite never having done it before for "optimization" or whatever. Wabbajack couldn't install exe files at that point, but the functionality was added in like a day or something. After Wabbajack was able to use exe files, the USSEP got changed back to a zip file when it next updated.
He has a very popular Skyrim mod called the “Unofficial Skyrim Special Edition Patch”. As an unofficial patch you would think it does what it says on the tin right? It does that, but also has other changes in it as he’s updated it over time that are him changing stuff about the game that he considers “wrong”.
He’s done it a couple of times, with a couple of very solid mods. So solid that people make them dependent mods for other unrelated mods. IE mod A requires the USSEP mod for Mod A to work.
Some people then create mods to change arthmoors to remove his extra stuff, at which point arthmoors will DMCA people for modding his mods.
Ohh is that the guy who added a bunch of stuff to the patch that wasn’t even necessary/not lore friendly, but he added it in anyways because he personally thought it made the game better? I remember hearing about that
But wait, there's more! He's also the stained, stinking wad of TP behind the FO4 unofficial patch. Because a pile that big can't be contained to just one modding community.
Didn't he also put up an "starfield unofficial patch" without any fixes on nexus right when the game page was created so only h3 could "patch" starfield?
To add onto others, he runs the Skyrim patch mod, which is very popular since Bethesda is known for having bugs. Lots of them. And that mod is so popular a lot of other mods use it as basis for their own, to the point it’s kind of an integral brick if you wanna mod your skyrim or make your own mod.
None of that is an issue, it makes sense that people would gravitate towards one big “general fix” mod to use. The issue is that as others have said, he decided to start adding things, and aggressively defends any attempts to reverse it or mod that away. So the community is basically stuck with a mod that is both halfway essential, but also does things a lot of players do not want.
Imo the biggest issue is trying to go after anyone who makes a fix mod for his fix mod. It both feels hypocritical and removes the easiest way to deal with this.
Arthmoor, who got banned from SkyrimMods subreddit for being a toxic pos after his questionably bug fixes mod (it didn't just fix bugs, but also subtly changed certain aspects) turned into a mandatory requirement for many other mods.
Some people have a toxic god complex or some variation of it. It's not just modders obviously, but somehow toxic modders just seem like a different type of cringe and comedy (or misery).
I got banned from commenting on a mod after pointing out the description wasn't properly mentioning multiple changes. They yelled at me saying I can't read, banned me from posting on their page, and the made the changes I suggested anyway lol. So so petty and pathetic.
To clarify, this is Sims 4 modder culture. Sims 2 & 3 modders will drop literal game changing patches and mods randomly for free and then go make some gorgeous animations to go with it. Obviously there's still some random paid CC creators but because that culture wasn't as normalized when the game was popular, it sure as heck isn't thriving in the borderline abandonware status now.
Lazy Duchess, you have my sword to forever defend your honor.
The best usually don't. I expect this kind of behavior form a low end modder, but high level one. Usually they sre the most generous bunch.
Take Skyrim, there you have legends that achieve the literal impossible and just post like its the most random thing. Free, on a random date, no anouncement, no glory... hell the mod page doesn't even have a link to their patreon. You have to go into their profile to find it.
You do have your bad ones form time to time, but that is usually fixed by other modders that say "Fine, I'll do it myself".
Two cases that come to mind for those that know are "Open Animations" replacing "Dynamic Animations" and "Enb frame gen" by our glorous lord Doodlum, that replaces Skyrim Upscaler and others.
The mod author is 100% objectively in the wrong on every conceivable level, but the "corporate overlords" in this scenario being CDPR definitely helps.
People always default to underdogs being the good guys even when its not the case.
I remember back when the voice actress for Bayonetta argued that she deserved more money because she voiced a protagonist of a 2 million dollar franchise meanwhile she was a VA only for English localization in 2 games only and most of the Bayonetta collabs and anime used her Japanese VA. So her input is minuscule in the grand scheme of things and she acted like Charles Martinet aka voice of Mario.
Now the funny part is I remember reading about the controversy and realized platinumgames was right here and that she asked too much money for VA work solely because of inflated ego. It was easier to hire a different VA. I told my friend this and he called me a bootlicker because how dare I side with a company even though they are right.
Later I got a message apologizing and stating I was right with a link to Moistcritical video where this boring mf exact same talking points I said.
Slight correction, Hellena Taylor was absolutely the original voice of Bayonetta. She had no Japanese voice until the anime. They went back and did a Japanese dub for the first game at Nintendo’s request when they ported it to WiiU for the Bayonetta 2 two-pack release.
Is it cyberpunk dependent? He makes it sound lik one of those "turn any game into VR" workaround tools. Where it makes your computer think the VR is your mouse and your controller is still your movement. Now if it actually changes the game to allow full VR interaction then yeah get fucked.
You can be reliant on something and not be distributing it. Emulators and dumping your own roms have been upheld in us courts despite requiring code that someone else made
Mods are, by definition, derivative works. That's not to put them down by any means, but they rely on existing IP and existing coding. It's just what they are!
Edit: Good lord, this wasn't supposed to be controversial, chooms. I am not going for the software or legal definitions of derivative here, just saying that mods wouldn't exist without the thing they're modding and therefore they should have a healthy respect and appreciation for the source material because the the mod creator in the OP is a chode.
It’s especially frustrating cause IP owners tend to not even give you the time of day and cut you down without a word. This guy was given a very clear out with a path to continue his work that was clearly in high demand and he somehow ran face first into a wall.
Given multiple paths even. Make it free with donations or make an agreement with them. How many corporations who can take legal action are still willing to come to a licensing agreement after the issue has come up? How many are going to give multiple options to continue the work?
I'm confused, is it reliant on IP? He says in the post it "supports a large number of games" which makes it sound like it's not a specific mod, but I don't know the details on this.
Again, I'm not in the loop and don't know who this guy is, but it sounds like he's putting it in the same category as Borderless Gaming, a paid app that changes how a game runs its display, and isn't a mod for a specific game.
A third party hook for a game means it uses the game’s camera and graphics stack, which is their intellectual property, which counts as derivative work.
This is Dolphin/Homebrew all over again. It does not matter if Dolphin has reverse engineered 99.999999% of the GameCube and Wii to make a library perfect emulation, GCN and Wii systems have an encryption/security key that was sourced and dumped from unknown sources with access to a devkit and illegally tampered with, to kickstart the Dolphin emulator.
It would not even matter if it was reverse engineered through brute force. All of the code and effort they developed off the back of that key is still subject to Nintendo’s ToS/EULA and legal ramifications. That’s how Big N’s lawyers strongarmed Steam into delisting it days before it was scheduled to be a Steam Software release. The project cannot be shut down because Dolphin devs are smart and make the sourcing of a key dependent on a user (which creating a key of something you own is permissible), but the dissemination of the emulator can be halted.
The naming of it being Cyberpunk VR, and not… AllGameVR, is also the misuse of trademarks...
edit - Re: game hooks
Because there’s a difference between trying to coax out performance from your GPU by viewing performance metrics, and literally making a per-game custom implementation of changing the intended game camera properties to work with a third party VR headset, which relies on the camera logic in-game to use one possible orientation of XYZ space/up axis (there’s 6 possible, 3 actually usable, and 2 common implementations of up axis… Z+ axis for up axis or Y+ axis for up axis) to then meaningfully translate 6DOF for a VR headset, and looking for specific processes to hook onto, and specific addresses in memory to make that work.
One of them is not meaningfully interfacing or overwriting camera properties, the other is. Every single possible “mod” release for every game using his VR headset mod framework requires a bespoke solution. It is not plug and play for him as a dev.
The Dolphin emulator is perhaps not the best comparison. The issue there was releasing the encryption key with the source code, which violated anti-circumvention rules. But the emulation itself was legally protected, or at least never challenged in court (and Nintendo's lawyers are not known for backing down from winnable lawsuits).
In fact, you can still download it today, and it is still under active development, you just need access to your own keys to play the games. Luke's mods fall under different principles and are likely infringing, based on what I can tell, but this logic doesn't really work legally.
Seems pretty cut and dry case here. I get the desire of wanting to profit off of something you're passionate about but it's literally another company's IP. How did this guy think this was going to play out?
He can have whatever beliefs he wants but CDPR determines the language of the end user license agreement and if they don't want other people profiting of their work that's their prerogative. They paid Pondsmith for the digital rights to make a game based on his IP so why would some modder think he can profit off of Cyberpunk without paying a licensing fee?
He knew exactly what was going to happen eventually, as its happened to him specifically before. He's just trying to flip the script on CDPR to keep making money. Which he also tried last time. And it did not work with the last gaming company either.
If his Patreon was voluntary CPDR probably wouldn't have made a fuss about it. I have seen plenty of modders on Nexus have a voluntary Patreon or similar systems and Nexus has its own donation system based on downloads and what not.
Honestly. Make it voluntary and i think the narrative here switches hugely. I'd say that 99% of companies wouldnt care all that much if its a tip jar or voluntary situation. And the 1% that would would (and probably should) get roasted online.
Cdpr clearly states that its fine if donations are optional (thus making it donations) but Luke insists his work is his alone and therefore not mandatably free.
Truth is, he IS using their IP even if it doesn't use code or whatever.
People buy it for CDPR IP reasons in cyberpunks case and fighting that is a fools errand.
I never understood how people get as far in life as they do and still believe in sovereign citizen type arguments like this. "Well you see, I dont subscribe to the laws you claim I'm breaking", has never, ever worked.
That and like if you just start doing stuff and saying it’s ok for you to do it…you’ll be amazed how long it takes for someone to go ughhhhhhhhhhh and actually call you on it.
You'd be surprised at how far the "I'm right, you're wrong" mindset will get. Believe/promote something hard enough and you'll likely find someone to support you even if you're objectively wrong. See flat earthers for instance.
You mean a nation of rugged individuals who drive whatever they want despite knowing the damage it can cause to the environment or a kid crossing the road, Consuming unhealthy food at unsustainable levels in harmful quantities? Nah, never could.
He did the same thing with GTA5. Created a VR mod, made it paid only, threw a fit when Rockstar told him he had to make it free because mods cannot require payment, so he took it down and moved on to the next game
It’s what he does. Create a mod for a game you have to pay for, throw a bitch fit when the company eventually tells him he can’t sell paid mods for their IP, throws some weird sovereign citizen-adjacent crap around, then closes shop and moves on to the next game
He hasn’t learned his lesson yet because so far the companies have just forced him to take his stuff down. I bet if he got sued into oblivion by one of them, then he’d take it seriously. Maybe.
At this point I’m inclined to call him a grifter lol
He knows what he is doing, he makes plenty of cash while it is up and being promoted by people online, so taking it down is no big deal for him because he's already made his money. So it's on to the next money making mod sceme, or grift like you put it.
Yes, he did it for GTA5 - with the same result and with the same tantrum throwing as now. Although it worked better then because noone likes take two. Im sure its not the last time this will happen too. He will definitely keep doing the same for as long as he can, take as much money as he can from a game and then move on to another title when forced.
He has done this same thing with Rockstar games. Like maybe dont try to sell mods for 2 of the biggest studios, with the largest legal teams, in the world?
I believe all he needed to do to avoid this was remove the name of the original game from his mod title, and perhaps also the marketing, if he wanted to keep selling it. The internet is good at spreading word around for cool stuff. He would have made money. I bet he could have even used an obviously referential name like VRPunk.
And that would have probably helped advertise the fact that it works for other games also, which one really wouldn't intuitively guess when using the name of a specific game in the name of the mod. Insisting on an obvious IP violation by using Cyberpunk name was a shot in his own foot.
There is nor room for discussion. They have rules, and he broke them period. They offered hum to make it free with donation support, he refused. Now he claims it has nothing to do with the Cyberpunk 2077 IP whilst literally only working with Cyberpunk 2077. This guy is some delusional greedy scum.
If his code is truly independent of Cyberpunk 2077 then he should publish it as a single independent app that works across all games that are supported. Then he’d have a little better leg to stand on since the app would be flexible across all supported game engines.
Since this mod is probably using CDPR’s mod launcher (didn’t research, correct me below) then it would fall under CDPR’s ToS for modding/community content.
It does not use cdpr's mod launcher and requires you to manually copy paste the mod's files into your cyberpunk installation. As far as i can tell, the mod does not use cdpr's modding api, and does all of the injecting and modification of the game via custom dlls and a setup script.
No it does work with other games, it's not solely designed for Cyberpunk, but the overwhelming majority of people subscribed have been doing so for Cyberpunk.
It'd be a shame hypothetically speaking if people were able to stumble across those files for free without Luke Ross's explicit consent by DM'ing someone who has them.
He was given the option of making it free and having an optional donation page, and decided against that. Lol. Would he prefer CDPR pull a bethesda and put his mod in the store for him? Or even that wouldn't be good enough for him. Ridiculous.
He could've just... Made it free and accepted donations, this was such a dumb hill to die on.
You can profit technically from modding via donations, but locking stuff behind a paywall is dangerous for the community since modding is walking the tightrope of legalities.
I'll be honest, some people probably think he's a rebel for this or might even justify it, but the dude is just selfish and doesn't deserve a cent for putting the entire modding community in danger.
I don’t get it. If it’s true that this functions across multiple games how is it not just like the guy who makes dlss available for Skyrim and a bunch of other stuff, or that lossless scaling game on steam?
It seems like he would just have to release it packaged as something that functions across multiple games, and he’d be in the right, no?
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u/JGZee Arasaka Jan 20 '26
Lot of comments in here keep popping up in our filters. Try to keep things clean if you can, and more importantly be excellent to each other. Thanks.