Epic Games Store Crashes With "Error 500" Affecting Fortnite And GTA 5 Giveaway [Update]

[Update: The crashing issues appear to be resolved, including an issue that occurred briefly on May 17, as the launcher is currently available again. Grand Theft Auto 5 is now available for free.]

Original story follows:

With Grand Theft Auto 5 being given away for free on the Epic Games Store today, the digital store has been receiving a substantial amount of traffic. It is getting so much traffic, in fact, that it has completely crashed before the game was even made available, which is even leading to problems for those trying to play Fortnite and other games through the Epic Games Launcher.

The official Epic Games Store Twitter account announced that it was experiencing higher-than-normal traffic, which can result in a few different issues for customers. These range from long loading times, the launcher completely crashing, or a "500" error message. GameSpot even had error messages appear in different languages when we attempted to connect.

GTA 5 is certainly popular enough to solicit that much attention, and it's free for one week on the Epic Games Store. The game is one of the most profitable pieces of entertainment in history and still routinely shows up on monthly top 10 sales charts, despite the fact that it released more than six years ago. On PC, mods are enabled, making it a (potentially) even crazier version of the game than the console editions. The freebie coincides with the start of a great Epic Games Store sale.

As noted above, the Epic Games Store launcher is used not only for buying games, but also for accessing titles like Fortnite. It will be the exclusive PC platform for the remastered Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 1 + 2 game, which is scheduled to release on September 4.