After last year’s source code leak, GTA 5 modders finally have the game running on the Nintendo Switch – but it ain’t pretty

Modders have gotten Grand Theft Auto 5 to finally (sort of) run on the Nintendo Switch. 

Rockstar Games’ immortal crime epic has been enhanced on next-gen consoles twice and ported over to your PC rigs, but despite originally releasing before the Nintendo Switch on less capable hardware, GTA 5 has never been playable on the hybrid handheld system. Until now. 

Modding outfit Superstar South has been trying to get GTA 5 to run on the console for months, with social media clips showing how the unofficial port would crash before ever even loading. Superstar South has now crossed a major milestone and made the game’s prologue heist playable. Blemished, but playable. See it below.

“Console is running at handheld mode clock rate, no overclock,” the modding team explains on Twitter. “The recording is not as smooth when compared to hardware video output,” it continues, so the chugging probably isn’t as bad as it seems. Although, the unofficial port still has some creases to iron out since the game crashes just a few minutes in. 

Why has it taken almost seven years to dream up such a project? Well, the GTA 5 source code was only leaked this past December, more than a year after hackers first got their hands on it, opening the floodgates for custom builds and mods that were probably impossible beforehand. 

Parent company Take-Two has been pretty hostile to some mods in the past – even ones made without the illegally released source code – but this project should hopefully be safe since it isn’t being made available publicly. 

Elsewhere in the handheld Rockstar Games verse, one fan recently shrank Red Dead Redemption 2’s massive Wild West to run “poorly” on mobile. Meanwhile, the official GTA Trilogy’s Netflix ports fixed a host of lingering issues still left in the console and PC versions. 

Check out everything we know about GTA 6 in preparation for the blockbuster sequel.