Who is the villain of Cyberpunk 2077? The company that runs the city
Smasher is the final boss, Yorinobu kills his father and Dex shoots V in the head. But the villain behind it all has no face: it is a company.
(Spoiler warning: this article gives away the plot of Cyberpunk 2077 and Phantom Liberty, endings included.) There is no single villain, and the main one is not even a person: it is Arasaka, the most powerful megacorporation in Night City. Its weapon is Adam Smasher, the final boss; its two faces are the founder, Saburo Arasaka, and his son Yorinobu, who kills him. The fuse is lit by Dexter DeShawn, the fixer who commissions the heist. Along the way stand Royce, boss of Maelstrom, and Placide, the Voodoo Boys' lieutenant. And in Phantom Liberty (2023) the question moves to Dogtown: Kurt Hansen rules there, and Songbird forces you to decide whom you betray. All of them are in the Cyberpunk 2077 archive.
The game drops the hint very early. In “The Rescue,” V and Jackie Welles break into an apartment taken over by scavengers, the kind who rip out implants to sell them, and find Sandra Dorsett in a bathtub full of ice. When V unblocks her biomonitor, Trauma Team arrives: the private medical rescue company she pays for its platinum plan. No public hospital shows up. A provider comes to look after its client. There, in miniature, is the whole answer.
// The suspectsA company, its weapon and the ones who deal on their own
Arasaka — the family that is a company
Saburo, the patriarch, preaches discipline and personal responsibility while funding Secure Your Soul, the technology that copies a mind onto a server and refutes his own creed (free will). Yorinobu, the son, spent twenty years rebelling against the company; on the night of the heist he kills his father, passes it off as poisoning and ends up as its head (positive deviance): the dissident who inherited what he hated. Saburo · Yorinobu.
Adam Smasher — the weapon
Arasaka's enforcer, a man turned almost entirely into a chassis, is the last enemy on nearly every path through the base game. Night City writes him off as a cyberpsycho, but his case file (acquired brain injury) runs into one fact: he has spent half a century at the same company, and frontal disinhibition does not hold down a job that long. He is not a machine out of control. He is a model employee. Full case file.
Dexter DeShawn — the trigger
He sets up the job that starts everything: stealing the Relic, an Arasaka biochip, from Yorinobu's suite at the Konpeki Plaza hotel. The heist goes wrong, Jackie dies and Dex, to cover himself, shoots V in the head and dumps the body in a landfill. Soon afterward he is killed by Goro Takemura, Saburo's bodyguard. His case file (rational choice) sums it up: the decision that saved his night destroyed his business. Full case file.
Before the heist, the first big obstacle is Royce, who has just overthrown Brick at the head of Maelstrom and refuses to honor the deal Brick made with Dex: the Flathead, the robot stolen from Militech that will later sneak into the Konpeki, was already paid for, and Royce wants to be paid again (delinquent subculture). In Pacifica, the half-built district that the money abandoned, Placide charges for the only thing that works there: the connection to the net (advanced marginality).
Kurt Hansen and Songbird — the deal
Phantom Liberty came out on September 26, 2023, the date announced by CD Projekt Red. Kurt Hansen, a former Militech colonel, refused to withdraw after the Unification War and turned a walled-off piece of Pacifica into Dogtown, with no police and no corporations, paid for by arms trafficking (social disorganization). Songbird, the FIA netrunner, makes a deal with him to bring down President Rosalind Myers's plane in exchange for a cure, and deceives V with one that only works for one person (neutralization). In “Firestarter” you choose whom to betray: her or Agent Solomon Reed. Hansen survives neither path. Hansen · Songbird.
Adam Smasher
Read Adam Smasher’s full case file · Acquired brain injury →
// The theoryMessner and Rosenfeld: when the market swallows the other institutions
In 1994, the American sociologists Steven Messner and Richard Rosenfeld published Crime and the American Dream and scaled Robert Merton's anomie (1938) up to an entire society. Their institutional anomie has a cultural half, a dream that measures everyone by what they achieve and puts no ceiling on money, and a structural one, the decisive half: the economy is supposed to coexist with the family, the school and politics, which teach limits that cannot be bought. When it dominates them and fills them with its logic, they stop restraining anyone, and the means that counts is the one that works, legal or not.
In Night City, the corporation is the state
Messner and Rosenfeld described a tilted balance. Night City is the balance with the other pan missing. The family is a company: Arasaka's patriarch plans to survive as a copy on a server, and the son who kills him inherits the firm. Health care is a subscription. And politics is a subsidiary: the president of the New United States, Rosalind Myers, used to run Militech, and the warlord of Dogtown is a former colonel of that same company. In the theory, the market pressures the state. In Night City, it takes the state's place.
That is why the villains at the bottom look so much like the ones at the top: they are all doing business. Maelstrom has a mole inside Militech, and Royce keeps a list of buyers. Placide charges a toll on the net. Dex, when the job goes wrong, liquidates the person he hired the way you close an account. And those in charge, according to the game's own promotional material, find it worth looking the other way as long as Hansen's arms business turns a profit.
Cyberpunk 2077
Night City is not short of law: it has too much market, and nobody is left outside it to say no.
// The answerSo who is the main villain?
If you need a name, Arasaka: the owner of the Relic and the one that puts Smasher at the end of the road. If it has to be a person, Yorinobu, the company's human face, with Smasher as the final enemy. And behind all of them stands a villain with no case file: a city where nothing is left outside the market.
// The flawThe city hands out the offers; each one signs his own
The theory has well-known limits. It was built to explain why the United States suffers more violent crime than other rich democracies, and its portrait of the American Dream does not always travel well. Its concepts are hard to measure, it explains national rates rather than individuals, and it somewhat idealizes the family and the school, which can do harm on their own. Night City, moreover, is a deliberate caricature.
Above all, the tilted balance explains why Night City turns out villains in series, not which one pulls the trigger. Yorinobu chose to kill his father; Dex, to shoot V rather than swallow the loss; Songbird, to hand over a president and lie to someone who was also dying. In “Firestarter” the game puts you on the same balance and lets you choose. Explaining is not excusing: the structure puts the offers on the table, but the signature belongs to whoever signs.
Three key takeaways
- The antagonist of Cyberpunk 2077 is Arasaka; Adam Smasher, its enforcer, is the final boss; Saburo and Yorinobu are the two faces of the family, and Dex is the trigger. In Phantom Liberty, Kurt Hansen and Songbird are in charge.
- Institutional anomie (Messner and Rosenfeld, 1994): when the economy dominates the family, the school and politics, the goal of success loses its brakes. In Night City, the corporation takes the place of the state.
- The theory explains why the city manufactures villains, not what each of them chose: explaining is not excusing.
Sources · further reading
- Messner, S. F. & Rosenfeld, R. (1994). Crime and the American Dream. Wadsworth.
- Merton, R. K. (1938). “Social Structure and Anomie.” American Sociological Review, 3(5), 672-682.
- Scullion, C. (June 11, 2023). “Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty gets a September release date.” VGC. https://videogameschronicle.com/news/cyberpunk-2077-phantom-liberty-gets-a-september-release-date/
- CD Projekt Red (April 2, 2025). “Cyberpunk 2077: Ultimate Edition comes launch day to Nintendo Switch 2.” https://www.cdprojekt.com/en/media/news/cyberpunk-2077-ultimate-edition-comes-launch-day-to-nintendo-switch-2/
- CD Projekt Red (2020, 2023). Cyberpunk 2077 and Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty. CD Projekt.
// Quick challengeWhich theory best explains Adam Smasher?
Frequently asked questions
Who is the main villain of Cyberpunk 2077?
There is no single one. The antagonist is Arasaka, the most powerful megacorporation in Night City. Its human face is Yorinobu Arasaka, who kills his father, Saburo, on the night the Relic is stolen, and its weapon is Adam Smasher, the game's final boss. The story is set in motion by Dexter DeShawn, the fixer who commissions the heist and then shoots V in the head. Royce, of Maelstrom, and Placide, of the Voodoo Boys, are obstacles along the way.
Is Adam Smasher the final villain of Cyberpunk 2077?
He is the final boss: nearly every path through the base game ends with V facing him. But he is not the mastermind of the story; he is Arasaka's enforcer. Night City writes him off as a cyberpsycho, and his KRIMINIS case file questions that diagnosis: he has worked for the same company for half a century, which does not fit a brain that has lost control of its impulses. He looks more like an employee than a machine gone haywire.
Who is the villain of Phantom Liberty?
Kurt Hansen, the former Militech colonel who rules Dogtown with his militia, Barghest, and funds it through arms trafficking. The other antagonist is Songbird, the FIA netrunner who makes a deal with Hansen to bring down President Rosalind Myers's plane in exchange for a cure, and who deceives V with it. In the mission “Firestarter,” the player decides whether to help Songbird or betray her, and the ending depends on that choice.
What does institutional anomie have to do with Cyberpunk 2077?
Steven Messner and Richard Rosenfeld's institutional anomie theory (Crime and the American Dream, 1994) holds that crime grows when the economy dominates the institutions that should restrain it, such as the family, the school and politics. Night City is that society taken to the extreme: the Arasaka family is a company, medical rescue is paid for by subscription and the country's president used to run Militech. The theory explains why the city manufactures villains, but it does not excuse what each one chose to do.