It's a good question! Who knows the dimensions of their licensing?! But, yeah, I'm thinking about Night City and/or something like it (within the CP77 franchise). They definitely have the resources for it.
Sure, and they are planning to monetize themselves.
You'll have to explain what you mean by this part. What 3rd party software? The R Talsorian IP? I don't know who all have actually looked at what's in the Modding data provided by CDPR for Cyberpunk 2077 but honestly, if you look, they gave a LOT. I'm working on my own software so I don't have the "patience" or the "time" to dig into it beyond what I have. It's full of shortcuts into the engine. To make tools for it wouldn't be too hard, but if they were to give even a watered-down set of tools, Open Source or not, (more than what's been provided) it should be useful.
There are several things that made CP2077: the Cyberpunk universe (like the city,NPCs like Johnny,Saburo, the lore) and the game engine (what CDPR used to make the game).
The Cyberpunk "universe" is a registered trademark from Rtalsorian, that CDPR licensed (and frankly I don´t know the details of the deal). They might allow mods within their game, but giving it "for free" so you can use it for your own game/app/whatever might break that licensing with Rtalsorian (quite likely I guess).
Then you have the game engine itself (the REDengine) that is how they built the game-or in previous iteration The Witcher III,II..1 I think was Aurora Engine?-.
Ideally, you want something that allows to create maps, objects,quests,dialogues, NPCs, animations,physics,lightning, audio etc... but this is where CDPR is using 3rd party software for some of those functions... say that you like NPC facial animations in CP2077, is using JALI:
https://jaliresearch.com/#pricing... CDPR cannot give you JALI for free, its not their tool. When you launch the game before or after REDENGINE letters is a list of 3rd party tools they used to create the game, you need to find what files they create with them, how the game reads it and find alternatives to generate them if its software that you need to pay.
So unless REDengine, has equivalents of JALI and others embedded they will release the engine with "gaps" on what you can do . Game engines like Unity and Unreal, allow full game development within the engine-no extra software- and modularity so they can also use 3rd party software-middleware- REDengine probably has a ton of "glue" code to interface its different parts.
The tools that you are asking for, is what other people has been referring as modkit. Modders in this thread can comment on limitations and wishlistists that they have on the current set of tools available.
The Creation Kit of Bethesda (modders correct me) is probably the best "community" tool available to play/tweak/modify with games already built.
As far as Roblox, I think people have a narrow view of what can be considered Metaverse software. Seriously, for the developers of Cyberpunk, it WAS a metaverse at a construction level. They may not have all been doing stuff like Roblox and Minecraft during development (multi-user gameplay kinda stuff), but from what I've gathered, they did a little and it was possible. I'm realistic, in that I do believe they want to retain a certain amount of creative control over the direction of the IP, but I think, even from what they've gleaned from the Modding community so far, that they can accelerate and acquire even more if they were to view more of the community creativity that might not have been considered in the pre-release development process.
i cannot comment on their development model(my only question is "Why you didn't adapt Interlock system from tabletop?"), but I think is quite different business models.
In one you allow users to create content and you monetize, you need to allow easy and fast creation of new stuff but quality might be lower.
In other you create the content and (maybe not CDPR yet) allow users to extent the lifetime of your content by modifying it (modifications can be quite radical, but tend to be over a base).
Thanks for the question. . . . I'm skirting around other "Hostilities" directed at me
No worries, but if you don´t mind a suggestion.
Sometimes, in written format its better to assume that the reader is a little bit "stupid"-me specially,since I'm not a native English speaker- and elaborate a little bit more your line of thought to make things clear.
People in general is nice in this forum, based on my experience (and moderators are always on duty in case somebody is not).
PS:edited because i double posted, 16+ hours awake is not healthy.
PS2: it was all much easier in times of Assembler