The Epic Games Store was down yesterday following GTA 5 crash

Is the Epic Games Store down? Well it was yesterday, but Epic says it's back up and running after the storefront started a promotion where you could get copies of GTA 5 for free.  

The influx of traffic to the online marketplace, brought about by everyone simultaneously attempting to redeem GTA 5 as this week's free Epic Store game, sent the store into meltdown mode, with many unable to access either the browser version of the site or the application itself. 

Finally, earlier today, Epic claimed it had "deployed updates to provide resolution for these issues", confirming that most users should now be able to access the store and download GTA 5 for themselves without hassle. 

This is hopefully the first and last time this happens for Epic Games, which is releasing a major new title every week as part of its free service, alongside major discounts on existing applications found on the store. 

The studio has promised that it'll "continue to monitor traffic and provide updates if further issues are encountered", so be sure to keep an eye on its Twitter account to stay informed of any downtimes and hot fixes as they arrive. 

We'll update this page whenever the Store goes down, too, so be sure to bookmark and return to it if you and others appear to be having problems.  

If you're gonna play it, you'll need to keep up on the weekly updates - that's what our GTA online patch notes are for. And if you want to have a bit of fun, check out our list of GTA 5 cheats.