Cyberpunk 2025: Cyberpsycho qu'est-ce que c'est

After a lot of avoidance, it’s finally time to turn our attention to Cyberpunk 2077’s Night City. As I keep saying, I don’t like Cyberpunk 2077, but I’ve found something in it that bears some discussion. And that discussion starts in Texas.

Texas has a weird water rights law called Rule of Capture, meaning, in effect, if you pump it off of your land, it’s yours — regardless of who it hurts downstream. This used to be true of oil as well — think “I drink your milkshake!” from There Will Be Blood. 

Today, hedge fund manager Kyle Bass is attempting to use Rule of Capture to his advantage by buying land and then building pumping stations. His plan is to sell the water he pumps both to the cities he’d be stealing it from and to any other thirsty cities around the country. During a July 15, 2025 hearing of the Texas Committee on Natural Resources, Bass was asked, “Do you believe that you have the capacity to feel empathy?”

Bass joked an answer, but hasn't stopped his project.

Lex Talionis 

The best side quests in Cyberpunk 2077 are anything to do with Delamain. The most interesting ones, however, are the Cyberpsycho Sightings. Mechanically, they’re just mini-boss fights, but the evidence you find at each encounter tells the story of the poor schlub you just beat into unconsciousness.

In the Cyberpunk TTRPG(s), cyberpsychosis is a disorder suffered by people who load up with too much cybernetic hardware. The concept of cyberpsychosis has been there since the beginning. It’s mentioned in passing in Cyberpunk 2013. In Cyberpunk 2020, cyberpsychosis is tied to a character’s Empathy and Humanity stats — the more hardware you add, the less human you feel. 

In 2020’s Cyberpunk Red, cyberpsychosis got expanded a bit and had some real-world psychology mixed in. “Cyberpsychosis comes about when the subject begins to compulsively alter the body beyond the human baseline.”

Arasaka’s favorite full ‘borg, Adam Smasher, is a good example of this. Adam’s remaining biology is basically just his brain. Everything else is hardware. Adam, while he started off as (at least) a sociopath, is a cyberpsycho now — though, admittedly, high-functioning. Even his wiki entry describes him as having “no empathy for others.”

Cyberpsychosis is more than just more parts equals more psychopath, though. It’s an ongoing process around the loss of empathy and (connection to) humanity. Overly enhanced individuals become more and more removed until they no longer see themselves as human and, with the hits to the empathy score, stop caring about others. 

And this makes cyberpsychopathy a two-part problem: the profit-driven manufacturers creating a product that drives a user toward psychosis, and the users for, well, using it.

Except that’s not really true.