Earlier this year, a scandal erupted in the Cyberpunk 2077 modding scene. The well-known VR modification developer LukeRoss received a DMCA strike ("copyright infringement") from CD Projekt RED.
The thing is, LukeRoss wasn't just making a modification, he was selling it. CDPR offered him to make the project free, but the modder didn't do it, and then faced the consequences.
Against this background, another premium mod quietly exists, which adds next-gen graphics to Cyberpunk 2077. The situation attracted the author of the YouTube channel In Theory Theo, and he decided to understand why the lawyers are not touching the creators of the "Dreampunk" project.
Blogger In Theory Theo studied both projects and came to the conclusion that the difference lies in technical details. LukeRoss's Cyberpunk VR modification deeply integrated into the game code. In contrast, the creators of the Dreampunk modification use ReShade as their main tool.
In Theory Theo explained that from a technical point of view, ReShade doesn't care what game the user is currently playing:
Essentially, it acts as an intermediary between the game, your PC, and what you see on the screen. Usually, the game tells the computer what to render on the monitor, and you get an image. With ReShade, it's a little different: it intervenes in this process and says, "Wait, before sending the image to the monitor, let me tweak it a bit." At the same time, ReShade never touches game assets, files, or code. And therein lies the loophole.
The creators of Dreampunk are not selling the mod itself, In Theory Theo explains, but only a "recipe" for ReShade, that is, how the game looks on the player's monitor. However, the blogger made a reservation that LukeRoss also used a similar argument in his defense, but CD Projekt RED's lawyers did not stop him — perhaps it's due to the scale of the project and the degree of "penetration" of his modification into the game:
The argument [Dreampunk] is that they are not selling anything related to the game itself. LukeRoss had a similar argument, but CDPR still applied DMCA. Why? It's all about money. Always about money. LukeRoss was charging money for his mod, and CDPR didn't like it. But did he have the legal right to charge money for it? That's a question only a court can answer. For a small modder like Ross, it would be an expensive process and probably not worth it.