It is an exploit. You have to be specific about what is being exploited though.
You are using save/load game state to identify patterns in how the game randomly generates items with the intent to bring about a preferable outcome. This is only possible because the method used to generate random seed outputs for varying item/mod type and is not sufficiently complex. Your random number generator isn't random enough and therefore not able to do its job.
For example. item generation on enemy corpses is seeded by their xyz coordinates when they die. You can confirm this by saving in front of a stationary enemy and killing them in place, then save/load game state to generate repeat items. If instead you allow the enemy to move to different coordinates and then kill them, you will get different item and/or mod types.
This method of randomizing loot is not new and works well in games where enemies are constantly moving, as it is very difficult for the player to kill the same enemy in exactly the same place enough times in a row to generate repeat items.
In Cyberpunk, enemies have a habit of standing around a lot (even when alerted to your presence) so it is easy to expose corpse item generation mechanics with save/load.
If they seeded corpse loot by xyz coordinates + real time increment, then it would not be possible to save scum corpses because real time passes between killing an enemy and reloading the game state so you can kill them again. So why not do it this way? Don't know. If I had to guess, maybe they are trying to minimize the number of seed states that need to be tracked and stored in save files, for performance/file size reasons. But I'm pulling that out of my arse. I have no idea. This could explain why sockets are never randomized though. Instead they created a mod (with a high occurrence rate) which disables a socket so the game only randomizes mods. This way you only need to track 1 seed state for 2 item variables - the type of mod and the number of sockets.
Save scumming is a byproduct of a deficient procedurally generated loot system. If you change the system in the right way, there will be no need for anyone to save scum. But this is something that needs a lot of dev work and is non trivial to implement so it will take time.
