Epic Games Store goes down because everyone couldn’t wait to get GTA 5 for free

As expected, Grand Theft Auto V is now available in the Epic Games Store as the free game from May 14 to May 21, 2020. Unfortunately, it seems like everybody is accessing the store all at once, which resulted to an overwhelming load for the Epic Games Store’s servers.

UPDATE as of 10:38AM: You can now claim GTA 5 on the Epic Games Store.
UPDATE as of 1:11AM: Some users are reporting that they are now able to enter and claim GTA V for FREE.

Just before the scheduled 11PM Philippine Standard Time (PST) reveal, the site has been inaccessible to a lot of people. There are lucky ones who were able to access it and claim the FREE GTA V immediately, but majority of the reports say that it’s down. Other users are experiencing language issues, with some noting that they are getting Chinese characters.

Here is the official statement from the @EpicGames official Twitter account.

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

The store has been down for almost an hour already as of writing. But don’t worry, the company will probably get it sorted out in the next hour or so as they scale their capacity for the current demand. There are no limits mentioned, so everyone will probably get their copy before May 21 ends.

Those who already claimed the game say that people should go directly to the Epic Games launcher and take it from there. But if you just want to keep refreshing on your browser for whatever reason, you may go to the official website here.