With last year’s long-awaited arrival of Cyberpunk 2077, numerous players have been taking to the futuristic in-game locale of Night City. While the experience has proven to be a lest-than-optimal adventure for some, there are nonetheless plenty who have made themselves at home in the gritty cyber-metropolis. Unsurprisingly, it appears we can count PC modders in the latter category, especially upon the arrival of a mod allowing users the potential to “get busy” with any character they’d like, including Keanu Reeves’ Johnny Silverhand.

Uploaded to NexusMods earlier this week, the mod in question allowed players to swap the places of one character with another, or notably, with one of Night City’s many “Joytoy” sex workers. Though it was initially designed around romancing new love interests in place of Judy or Panam, the internet once again demonstrated its ability to take things to the extreme by inevitably opening Keanu Reeves’ character up to the lucrative vocation of turning tricks. As one might expect, this inclusion is where Cyberpunk 2077 developer CD Projekt decidedly drew the line.

As of now, the original model swap mod has been deleted from NexusMods, with CDPR citing it as being “harmful to others” due to its use of “real-world likenesses” in a statement with Eurogamer. “Our most important rule regarding user-generated content, game mods in particular, is that it can’t be harmful towards others,” CDPR’s statement read. “In the case of model swaps, especially those that involve explicit situations, it can be perceived as such by the people who lent us their appearance for the purpose of creating characters in Cyberpunk 2077.”

​​”Therefore, when making fan content, creators have to make sure they’ve got permission from all the concerned parties (which might be people other than CD Projekt Red),” the developer continued. “For the characters we’ve invented for the game, we broadly permit you to tweak the game at will and just have fun. When it comes to models of real people whom we’ve asked to participate in the game, we kindly ask you to refrain from using them in any situation that might be found offensive if you don’t have their explicit permission.”

CD Projekt opened the floodgates for fan-works such as these just a few days ago when Cyberpunk 2077 began offering official mod support. With this in mind, the studio obviously isn’t against the idea of mods, but only ones that could put real-world people like Keanu Reeves in unintended and “harmful” positions. The mod’s maker, Catmino, has also expressed similar sentiments, having now re-uploaded the model swap mod to NexusMods, but this time sans Keanu Reeves. The mod’s description was also updated to reflect the mod’s renewed focus moving forward.

“CDPR approached me and nicely asked to remove only a part of the original mod” the mod’s description read. “The reason was that there was one questionable part of it which included models that resemble real life people (specifically, the model of Johnny Silverhand), which should have been avoided in the first place – and my mistake was listening to the requests and including some model swaps that were not supposed to be in the mod originally.”

And I hereby also apologize (specifically to mr. Keanu Reeves) for not thinking this through at that time – but instead doing what the community asked for. The intentions of the mod have never been to do any harm to anybody – in any possible way, nor to disrespect anybody.”

“At the time, it seemed as a best idea to remove it as a whole until I get more details from the CDPR,” the description continued. “As everything has been talked out since, and I have been green-lit to re-upload the rest of my mod. I am re-uploading my mod which includes fully swapping out Panam and Judy, random swaps between Fingers, Dex, Sasquatch, Smasher, T-bug, 8ug8ear, Delamain, basilisk, and more to come.”

What do you think? How you feel about CDPR coming down on this mod? Are you interested in swapping Cyberpunk 2077 characters in the new version? Let us know in the comments below and be sure to follow Don’t Feed the Gamers on Twitter and Facebook to be informed of the latest gaming and entertainment news 24 hours a day! For more headlines recently featured on DFTG, check out these next few news stories:

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