The most common reason for this issue is improper use of struct tags (eg. `yaml` or `json`). Viper uses [github.com/mitchellh/mapstructure](https://github.com/mitchellh/mapstructure) under the hood for unmarshalling values which uses `mapstructure` tags by default. Please refer to the library's documentation for using other struct tags.
Viper opted to use [Go Modules](https://go.dev/wiki/Modules) to manage its dependencies. While in many cases the two methods are interchangeable, once a dependency releases new (major) versions, `GOPATH` mode is no longer able to decide which version to use, so it'll either use one that's already present or pick a version (usually the `master` branch).