The Epic Games Store is currently experiencing widespread outages after releasing Rockstar Games’ popular “Grand Theft Auto V” title for free, Epic confirmed.
“We are currently experiencing high traffic on the Epic Games Store,” “Fortnite” developer Epic Games tweeted Thursday morning. “We are aware that users may be encountering slow loading times, 500 errors, or launcher crashing at this time and we are actively working to scale. We’ll provide an update as soon as we can.”
Users on outage tracking site DownDetector.com reported errors this morning, and most noted it appeared to be a problem maintaining connection to the Epic server. The basic “GTA V” game for consoles and PCs typically costs $30.
Epic regularly works with publishers to license their titles and make them available for free on PCs for a limited time through the Epic Games Store. The company originally tweeted that “GTA V” would be available for free from May 14-21 beginning at 8 am, but the post was since deleted — players are speculating this is Epic’s attempt to curb demand for its servers as it works to find a technical fix.
Players who do manage to download “GTA V” are allowed to keep it for life after the free period expires, as with all Epic’s free downloads. The vastly popular racing and first-person shooter title was released in 2013 and set a sales record that year by selling $800 million worth of copies in its first 24 hours.
We are currently experiencing high traffic on the Epic Games Store.
We are aware that users may be encountering slow loading times, 500 errors, or launcher crashing at this time and we are actively working to scale. We'll provide an update as soon as we can.
— Epic Games Store (@EpicGames) May 14, 2020