GTA 5 Nintendo Switch port cancelled after Take-Two cease-and-desist

An unofficial project aiming to get Grand Theft Auto 5 running natively on the original Nintendo Switch has come to an abrupt end. Developer M0jso and the group Paralympics Productions have cancelled their Switch port after receiving a cease-and-desist notice from Take-Two Interactive, Rockstar Games’ parent company. The group is set to close on 3 October 2026, ending development on its GTA 5 projects for Nintendo Switch and Android. It closes a strange chapter for one of gaming’s longest-running blockbusters. GTA 5 has appeared across three generations of PlayStation and Xbox consoles, plus PC, yet Nintendo’s hybrid has never received an official version. This unofficial project tried to fill the gap in a very different way.

GTA 5 was running directly on Switch hardware

The project wasn’t based around streaming GTA 5 from a PC. It aimed to run the game directly on modified Nintendo Switch hardware. Developers had been adapting material connected with GTA 5’s leaked source code and recompiling parts of the game for the ARM architecture used by Nintendo’s console. The original Switch runs on Nvidia’s Tegra X1 chip, hardware first released more than a decade ago.

Getting GTA 5 running locally on such a machine was no small technical exercise. Early builds weren’t ready to compete with Rockstar’s commercial releases. Performance could drop below 30 frames per second, and users needed modified hardware, custom firmware and their own game files. Some demonstrations relied on higher clock speeds to improve performance.

Still, GTA 5 was running locally. No remote PC was doing the heavy lifting. For a game never released on Switch, this made the project an unusual technical experiment.

Take-Two has ended the project

Development stopped after Take-Two sent a cease-and-desist notice. M0jso confirmed Paralympics Productions would shut down on 3 October, with work on the Switch port ending alongside it. Plans for an Android version of GTA 5 have been dropped too. The group doesn’t plan to publish its source code.

Such a release could create further legal problems, particularly since development involved material associated with leaked GTA 5 source code. GTA 5 remains commercial software owned by Rockstar Games and Take-Two Interactive.

So this isn’t a case where development has moved quietly to another team or another repository. The people working on the port say the project is over. For anyone hoping to try a more complete release later, there’s no planned public version waiting around the corner.

Rockstar has never released GTA 5 for Switch

Perhaps the strangest part of the story is how long GTA 5 has been around without reaching a Nintendo console. Rockstar originally released GTA 5 for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 in September 2013. PlayStation 4 and Xbox One versions followed in 2014, with PC arriving in 2015. Native PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S editions came years later. Nintendo Switch, released in 2017, never joined the list.

Rockstar hasn’t ignored the console completely. Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy – The Definitive Edition brought GTA 3, Vice City and San Andreas to Switch. Red Dead Redemption received a Switch release too.

GTA 5 remains missing. The cancelled project shows running the game on original Switch hardware is technically possible in some form. A commercial port is a different proposition.

Rockstar would need to hit its own targets for frame rate, image quality, stability, loading, storage and certification. Experimental software running on modified hardware doesn’t face the same requirements as a game sold through Nintendo’s eShop.

Switch 2 changes the hardware question

Nintendo Switch 2 makes the situation more interesting. The newer console offers a far stronger technical base than the original Tegra X1 machine, removing many of the hardware limitations faced by this unofficial project. Rockstar still hasn’t announced GTA 5 for Switch 2.

Nor has it announced a Nintendo version of GTA 6. For now, anyone wanting an official modern GTA experience still needs to use one of Rockstar’s supported PlayStation, Xbox or PC versions.

The unofficial Switch project won’t change this. Its developers managed to get GTA 5 running locally on Nintendo’s original hybrid console, but Take-Two’s legal action has stopped development before the port could move much further. More than 13 years after GTA 5 first appeared, Nintendo owners are still waiting to see whether Rockstar itself ever decides to bring Los Santos to a Nintendo machine.