What just happened? With over 120 million units sold since its release, one would assume most gamers can already count GTA V among their collection. But when the Epic Games Store started giving away Rockstar's title yesterday, the huge number of people trying to access the service caused it to overload.
Following rumors that the game would become one of its weekly free offerings, GTA V became the latest Epic Games Store giveaway yesterday. Anyone with a free account can grab it from now until May 21. You'll also need to enable two-factor authentication, which Epic requires for some of its freebies.
Being the best-selling game of the previous decade, and sitting in second place on the list of best-selling titles ever, you'd be forgiven for thinking most people already own GTA V, but so many users headed to the Epic Store at the same time that it overwhelmed the site. Some people discovered strange crashes and errors, while others couldn't access the service at all.
We've deployed updates to provide resolution for these issues, and most users should be able to access the Epic Games Store and Launcher at this time. We'll continue to monitor traffic and provide updates if further issues are encountered. Thank you for your continued patience!
--- Epic Games Store (@EpicGames) May 15, 2020
Epic tweeted that the volume of traffic was causing 500 errors, launcher crashes, and slow loading times. Some users experienced other issues, including a random language appearing and errors in the site's layout, which is something this writer encountered.
--- ikaan (@ikaan0) May 14, 2020
Epic says it has addressed the problems with an update, and the free GTA V download can now be accessed without issues. If you intended to grab the most profitable media product of all time for free, make sure to do so before next Thursday.