For all its faults, Cyberpunk 2077 (opens in new tab) is still an impressive achievement. Night City is a glimmering nest of skyscrapers that tower above a wide ocean of social rot. But one thing has always been missing: Why can’t I monetise the rot?
Thanks to a new mod from keanuWheeze and scornthegreat (and uploaded by NexusGuy999, just winner names all around), you can! Stock Market and News System (opens in new tab) finally extends the dead hand of finance capital into Cyberpunk’s day-to-day. As you can probably surmise from the mod’s name, it adds a “fully useable” stock market system as well as a news service, both of which respond to your actions in-game.
That means 33 stock tickers you can monitor and invest in for the likes of Arasaka, Militech, Lazarus and others, all of which will bounce and dip depending on your completion of quests. It works like the stock market in GTA 5 (opens in new tab)—massacring a bunch of a corp’s goons can tank its stock (and give you an opportunity to buy low), but doing the same thing for that corporation’s competitors could send stock skyrocketing.
The news service, meanwhile, comes with 66 news updates that are triggered based on the completion of missions and certain player actions. At long last, you too can have your name in lights if you just commit a crime of serious enough magnitude to warrant a news slot. You can even get notifications about your heinous deeds sent to your (in-game) phone. Convenient!
The mod is an impressive effort and an interesting wrinkle to lay atop Cyberpunk’s already-rich world. I always enjoyed the sheer, insider trading rush of buying up a wad of a company’s stock right before I went out to assassinate its rival’s CEO in GTA 5. Adding that sociopathic, white-collar thrill to Cyberpunk seems like a match made in heaven.
