Sixty-six players were running around Night City at once, and the server held. Then more showed up, and it didn’t.
That’s the headline from the second semi-open test of CyberMP, the multiplayer mod that’s been quietly grinding away at the thing CD Projekt RED decided not to build.
The instability isn’t the story. Finding the ceiling is. The team now knows where things break, and they’ve vowed to fix it before the next open test. In its current shape, the mod handles 30 to 40 players without complaint.
The one thing Cyberpunk 2077 never had
Cyberpunk 2077 gets praise for plenty. Multiplayer was never on the list, because it doesn’t have any.
CD Projekt RED has stayed firm on that. The studio has said it’s happy with the call to make its RPG a single-player experience, and it hasn’t wavered while fans kept asking to take Night City on with friends.
You can see why they keep asking. The city is built for it. Dense, vertical, absurdly detailed, and full of things that break in interesting ways when you introduce a second person with a gun.
With a sequel in development, that feedback may yet land somewhere. But that’s a maybe, and it’s years out.
So the modders did it themselves
CyberMP has been around a while, or at least in progress. It isn’t finished. What it has instead is a development cycle that runs in public, with fans testing every step.
The pitch is simple. Hit the streets with friends. Spin up your own server. Customize it with new features, and friendly fire seems like an obvious candidate for the list.
It’s early. It’s also the most expansive multiplayer experience Cyberpunk 2077 has, by a distance.
What the numbers actually tell you
A 66-player peak in a game engine that was never asked to do this is real progress. The influx that followed pushed things past stable, which is exactly what a semi-open test is for.
Thirty to 40 is the comfortable number today. That’s a full server of chaos in a city this size, and it’s enough to make the fantasy work.
More tests may be held. There’s no word on when the mod will be finished.
Worth keeping an eye on
If you’ve been waiting on co-op in Night City, this is where it’s happening. Not in a studio roadmap. In a test server that fell over at 67 and got back up.
Track CyberMP’s progress and you’ll know the moment it’s ready. Then you and a few dozen strangers can go show Arasaka a real incident.
The neon-soaked metropolis has been waiting for company.
