The Epic Games Store has been counting down to the launch of an unnamed free title at 11AM ET today, and we learned last night that game would be Rockstar’s smash hit Grand Theft Auto V, thanks to an early tweet posted by Epic Games’ official Twitter account. However, since the clock passed 11AM ET, the Epic Games Store has been down entirely, presumably as people have been refreshing the site trying to claim the free game.
Epic has acknowledged that the store is experiencing issues:
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
According to the leaked tweet, Grand Theft Auto V will be available as a free download through May 21st:
It appears the heavy traffic to the Epic Games Store could also be affecting other Epic services as well, as an official Fortnite Twitter account said the game was “investigating issues” on PC and Mac:
We’re investigating issues on PC and Mac that may impact Launcher logins and in-game purchases.
We’ll provide an update as we have more info. pic.twitter.com/YlFUP3vQEy
— Fortnite Status (@FortniteStatus) May 14, 2020
Once the Epic Games Store returns, if you want to claim GTA V, you should know that Epic Games is now requiring people to have two-factor authentication turned on to claim free games. If you need a guide on how to turn on two-factor authentication for your account, Epic has one you can follow here.
Epic has given away dozens of free titles since the Epic Games Store launched in December 2018, and the company said in January that it plans to continue to give away free games through 2020.
