Back when Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty finally went live, I had a small ritual. Boot the game, check the patch notes, and then quietly pray that my mod list survived the update. On that particular night, it didn't. The moment I loaded into Dogtown, something felt off. Not broken — just absent. My V was still there, fully customized, jacket and all. But the little quality-of-life tweaks, the metro lines, the extra cyberware slots... they were gone. Not a single one had made the jump.

Honestly, the silence hit different.

CD Projekt Red had announced the change right before launch. Every mod would be automatically disabled for the expansion. The reasoning was simple: the Cyberpunk 2077 2.0 update had rewritten large chunks of the game's code, and old mods could trip over that new foundation. Crashes, corrupted saves, invisible cars — the usual gremlins. Rather than let those gremlins run loose through Phantom Liberty, the developers pulled the plug until mod authors could catch up. And, you know, I get it.

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Let's be real: the mods had earned their place in my heart long before Dogtown arrived. During the long, rocky stretch after Cyberpunk 2077 first launched, modders were the ones holding Night City together. The base game had stumbled out of the gate in a state that felt more like a frantic beta than a polished RPG. Quest flags broke. NPCs drove like they had something personal against pedestrians. Performance in crowded areas could dip into a slideshow. And every week, some patient modder would release a fix that made the whole thing breathe a little easier.

Over the years, my favorite mods fell into a few delicious categories:

  • 🚇 Living world mods: a working Metro system, more crowded streets, vendors with actual schedules

  • 🕷️ Movement toys: grappling hooks, wall-running, enhanced double jumps

  • 🛠️ Fix-it patches: unsnarled quests, repaired inventory bugs, smoothed-out scripting

  • 🎭 Cosmetic chaos: new outfits, cyberware looks, and one deeply cursed Johnny Silverhand dance animation

Losing all of that for Phantom Liberty stung a little. But there was no real anger in the community, at least not from where I was standing. Most players understood. We had already waited almost three years for this DLC, through delays and patches and early previews that finally started to sound hopeful. A few more weeks without our favorite toys wasn't going to break us. In fact, it felt like a fair trade: a clean slate for a story that deserved one.

I spent my first hours in Dogtown learning the rhythm of the place. The district had its own pulse: checkpoints, armed convoys, and a desperate kind of beauty baked into every crumbling wall. V and Johnny Silverhand were back, but this time they were working with FIA agent Solomon Reed, untangling the mystery of an orbital shuttle crash in Night City's most dangerous district. The new campaign pulled me in fast, and for a while I forgot about the missing mods entirely.

Then I'd spot something — a locked door, a rooftop that begged for a taller jump — and my fingers would itch for the old tools. That's the thing about mods, right? They quietly weave themselves into how you experience a game, and when they're gone, the world feels just a little less yours.

Still, the silence didn't last forever. CD Projekt Red's wording hinted that the shutdown was temporary, and players reading between the lines saw patience as the smart play. Modders did what modders do: they dug into the new code, untangled the changes, and brought their creations back piece by piece. By 2026, the mod scene around Cyberpunk 2077 is healthier than ever. Phantom Liberty eventually stopped being a wall and became just another foundation to build on.

Looking back, I'm glad the developers chose a clean break. It gave Night City room to breathe again, and it gave the modding community a chance to rebuild without dragging old glitches into a new story. Some things are worth waiting for. And some things, it turns out, are worth letting go of for a little while.

Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty is available for PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X.