Epic Games Store Collapses With Crowds Over GTA V Giveaway

The Epic Games Store is down for many users at the time of writing due to a large influx of gamers seeking to qualify for a free version of GTA V. Users are also reporting issues with the launcher.

Epic reports having to deal with a lot of traffic at his game store and work on fixing problems because of this. “We are aware that users are experiencing slow loading times, error 500 messages and launcher crashes at the moment and we are actively scaling up.” Some users who can start the launcher report that the program is displayed in a different language than they had set.

The reason for the massive rush lies with the GTA V giveaway. The Windows version of the popular game is free to download and activate until May 21, and players will keep the game after this date. The only conditions are that players add GTA V to their Epic Games library and activate two-factor authentication for their account.

Epic began requiring two-factor authentication for players to qualify for free games in late April. On May 21, Epic will stop this temporary promotion to promote 2fa. The company wants as many players as possible to secure their accounts and also prevent cheating and fraud by users with fake accounts.