Epic’s online games store suffered an ‘outage’ last night after it made Grand Theft V free.
The store made Scotland’s most successful export totally free for users yesterday, but the site was quickly overwhelmed by users rushing to claim a copy of the game.
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
On Twitter, Epic acknowledged it was experiencing high traffic, warning users they may encounter slow loading times, launcher crashes and error 500 messages.
The company stated is was actively working to scale, promising an update when the situation was resolved.
Around 12 hours later, Epic reported it had 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’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
If you’re one of the 200 people on the planet who do not yet own Grand Theft Auto V, it will be free on the Epic Store until 21st May.
[H/T to GI.biz for the story]