Epic Games Store Crashes After Free GTA V Offer
The Epic Games Store crashed Thursday and stayed down for more than eight hours as users flooded its servers in pursuit of an offer to own Grand Theft Auto V for free.
GTA V was revealed as the next in Epic Games' long series of free games Wednesday night, and the outages began around 11 a.m. ET, when the offer went live.
We're aware that some users are encountering the following error message on the Epic Games Store: "Your account is unable to download any more free games at this time."
— Epic Games Store (@EpicGames) May 15, 2020
If you receive this error, please wait 24 hours. You should then be able to proceed with downloading the game.
Epic Games Store Crashes After Free GTA V Offer
Epic Games acknowledged the outage at 11:05 a.m. ET, then followed that acknowledgement up at 12:58 p.m. ET with a tweet saying the outage was still ongoing.
It's possible the store traffic may have also affected other Epic Games services, as Fortnite experienced connectivity problems on PC, Mac, iOS and Android, while mobile game Battle Breakers saw similar problems.
Although most of the problems appear to have been resolved, Epic Games says some users may still receive an error message preventing them from downloading free games.
"If you receive this error, please wait 24 hours," the official Epic games Store account tweeted Friday. "You should then be able to proceed with downloading the game."
Even if they can't download the title, players can now easily claim their free copies of Grand Theft Auto V. The offer remains available until May 21.