Free Grand Theft Auto V offer crashes Epic Games Store

The Epic Games Store and Launcher are experiencing issues after Grand Theft Auto V was released as a free game.

GTA V’s release as the latest weekly free game has resulted in a surge of traffic to the digital marketplace, resulting in some features not working as intended.

“We’re investigating issues on PC and Mac that may impact Launcher logins and purchases,” Epic said. “We’ll provide an update as we have more info.”

It also tweeted: “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.”

Prior to the offer going live, it was reported on Wednesday that GTA V would be free on the Epic Games Store until May 21. This was then backed up by an advertisement seemingly confirming the promotion.

The Epic Games Store’s weekly free game offer, which launched alongside the storefront in December 2018, will run throughout 2020.

Free titles on the Epic Games Store now “periodically” require that two-factor authentication be activated on users’ accounts before they’re able to be claimed.

Rockstar‘s parent company Take-Two said in February that GTA V had shipped 120 million copies since its September 2013 release.

Grand Theft Auto 6 is Rockstar’s next game but remains early in development, according to a recent report into working practices at the company.