GTA 5 is effectively open source now, and fans and modders are scrambling to figure out what that means

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Over a year after it was hacked, the GTA 5 source code has gone public

A hacker in front of a screen gasps
(Image credit: Rockstar Games)

The source code for GTA 5 went public this past Christmas Eve, over a year after it was originally obtained by hackers. Modders have already gotten their own custom GTA 5 builds up and running based on that leaked code, and now the whole community is reckoning with what this means for the future of the open-world game.

Pretty much all the information on this leak comes from community discussion on social media, a lot of which is - no surprise - quite contradictory. The one thing that seems certain is that the GTA 5 source code leaked in September 2022 alongside all that footage of GTA 6. The GTA 5 source code was privately traded among cheat makers and other hackers since then, and only now has been made available through a series of public downloads that began on December 24 - which, of course, publisher Take-Two is issuing takedowns against.

Modders quickly started playing with that source code, and within days, footage of a custom build of GTA 5 was already online. In theory, this sort of source code reveal could turn GTA 5 into a modder's paradise. With the game's building blocks out there for everyone to see, there should be no limits to the kinds of mods that could now come to GTA 5. Some fans are already hopeful for full-on DLC-style story expansions, and those don't seem far out of the realm of possibility.

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The issue is that Take-Two has already shown a pretty unfriendly stance toward mods, and I'd certainly expect the company to be even more aggressive about taking down mods built with source code that was obtained and released illegally. Rockstar developers have rightly been critical of the effects leaks have on their work, and I doubt there would be much goodwill toward mods derived from those leaks.

It doesn't look like this leak should have much effect on the cheating scene in GTA 5, regardless. As longtime Rockstar community member Tez2 notes, this code has been available to some cheat developers since 2022, and Rockstar has developed its more recent anti-cheat efforts with these exploits in mind.

There are already plenty of old-fashioned GTA 5 mods out there. 

Dustin Bailey
Dustin Bailey
Staff Writer

Dustin Bailey joined the GamesRadar team as a Staff Writer in May 2022, and is currently based in Missouri. He's been covering games (with occasional dalliances in the worlds of anime and pro wrestling) since 2015, first as a freelancer, then as a news writer at PCGamesN for nearly five years. His love for games was sparked somewhere between Metal Gear Solid 2 and Knights of the Old Republic, and these days you can usually find him splitting his entertainment time between retro gaming, the latest big action-adventure title, or a long haul in American Truck Simulator.