Night City was never supposed to stay a strictly single-player playground. For years players imagined neon-lit street races, improvised PvP shootouts in Pacifica and chaotic car chases cutting across districts with real people behind the wheels. Official plans for online features were eventually shelved, but the dream never really died – it just moved into the modding scene. 
The most ambitious attempt so far is CyberMP, a fan-made multiplayer framework for Cyberpunk 2077 that is suddenly looking very real.
From canceled plans to fan-made revival
The team has been quietly experimenting with the project since before 2024, yet only announced CyberMP publicly last year. Their goal is straightforward but huge: build the multiplayer layer that CD Projekt Red walked away from, without touching the original story or pretending to be a full co-op campaign. Instead, CyberMP focuses on modular events – races, PvP modes, social hubs – that plug into Night City’s existing systems and give players a reason to come back with friends.
A closed test that finally clicked
A recent closed playtest, shown in new gameplay footage, proved to be a turning point. According to the developers, the session didn’t just go fine; it exceeded their expectations across the board. The focus this time was on fundamentals: tightening synchronization between players and vehicles, stress-testing the servers under load, rolling out a new in-game overlay and seeing what would actually break when dozens of people hit the gas at the same time. The answer, surprisingly, was less than expected.
Races that feel like they belong in Night City
The highlight of the session was a dedicated Race Event that looked like the kind of chaotic fun many assumed Cyberpunk would ship with from day one. Cars accelerated and collided without rubber-banding all over the track, turns were readable, and client-side prediction kept things feeling responsive even when the netcode was under pressure. Watching the footage, it is hard not to think back to launch-era jokes about unfinished games and rushed deadlines; here, by contrast, you can see what careful iteration actually looks like.
Custom PvP arenas beyond the vanilla map
The test also showcased a PvP event on a wide custom map that does not exist in the vanilla game. It plays almost like an experimental combat arena carved out of Night City’s outskirts: long sightlines for snipers, elevated walkways for flanking and enough cover to encourage aggressive pushes instead of corner camping. What matters is not just that it works, but that it works with real people in motion, bullets and abilities flying everywhere without the whole session falling apart.
A sandbox of events, not co-op story mode
CyberMP deliberately avoids stepping on the main campaign’s toes. You will not be running through story missions in co-op or breaking carefully scripted encounters by dragging three heavily modded friends into them. Instead, the mod treats Night City as a shared sandbox. Players meet up, queue into different activities and bounce between structured events and more relaxed free-roam moments. Today that means races and PvP, but the framework clearly leaves room for new modes the community will inevitably start requesting once they get their hands on it.
Community buzz and industry flashbacks
That community is already buzzing. Some fans admit they commented on early teasers without even reading the details first, assuming it was just another abandoned attempt at online play. Others are still asking, half-confused, whether multiplayer was not supposed to be an official feature all along. You even see industry veterans chiming in with war stories about publishers demanding releases after two weeks of testing instead of months. Against that backdrop, a volunteer team slowly hardening its netcode before opening the floodgates feels almost radical.
What happens next for CyberMP
There is still no public release date, and the developers are open about the fact that bugs remain. Yet the latest footage suggests the foundation is finally strong enough to build on, rather than a barely held together proof of concept. For now, the best way to follow progress or secure a spot in future tests is the project’s official Discord server, where new clips and technical updates tend to appear first. If CyberMP keeps progressing at this pace, Night City may end up with the multiplayer underground it always deserved – not from the studio, but from the players who refused to let the idea go.