Today, the Epic Games Store continues its weekly giveaways of free PC games with a free copy of Grand Theft Auto V. While you might think everyone already owns GTA5 by now, the giveaway has proven so popular that it’s knocked the Epic store offline. So if you want to play Fortnite – or any other game on the launcher – you’re gonna be met error 500 codes.
“We are currently experiencing high traffic on the Epic Games Store,” the company says on Twitter. “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.”
In other words: Just wait it out, you can’t do anything to fix the problem right now. The Fortnite server status Twitter similarly says “we’re investigating issues on PC and Mac that may impact Launcher logins and in-game purchases.” Epic says it will provide updates as it continues to work to solve the issues.
For now, might we recommend checking in on some free Steam games?
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
We're investigating issues on PC and Mac that may impact Launcher logins and in-game purchases.
We'll provide an update as we have more info. pic.twitter.com/YlFUP3vQEy
— Fortnite Status (@FortniteStatus) May 14, 2020
Epic’s been quietly prepping for a major giveaway recently, as the launcher has started requiring 2FA for free game redemptions – but only for a limited time. Epic usually reveals the weekly giveaway seven days before it goes live, but this week the company simply advertised a mystery game.