So many people wanted GTA V that it overwhelmed the Epic Games Store

[midian182]

What just happened? With over 120 million units sold since its release, one would assume most gamers can already count GTA V among their collection. But when the Epic Games Store started giving away Rockstar’s title yesterday, the huge number of people trying to access the service caused it to overload.

Following rumors that the game would become one of its weekly free offerings, GTA V became the latest Epic Games Store giveaway yesterday. Anyone with a free account can grab it from now until May 21. You’ll also need to enable two-factor authentication, which Epic requires for some of its freebies.

Being the best-selling game of the previous decade, and sitting in second place on the list of best-selling titles ever, you’d be forgiven for thinking most people already own GTA V, but so many users headed to the Epic Store at the same time that it overwhelmed the site. Some people discovered strange crashes and errors, while others couldn’t access the service at all.

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

Epic tweeted that the volume of traffic was causing 500 errors, launcher crashes, and slow loading times. Some users experienced other issues, including a random language appearing and errors in the site’s layout, which is something this writer encountered.

pic.twitter.com/Afm1VWFiEU

— ikaan (@ikaan0) May 14, 2020

Epic says it has addressed the problems with an update, and the free GTA V download can now be accessed without issues. If you intended to grab the most profitable media product of all time for free, make sure to do so before next Thursday.

Permalink to story.

https://www.techspot.com/news/85240-many-people-wanted-gta-v-overwhelmed-epic-games.html

 

[Vulcanproject]

For me what it is was getting a version of the game that doesn't require Rockstar's godawful client to download it. I don't know what the situation was with it recently because I haven't played the game for a few years.

AFAIK the version I had was still tied to it, so this is just much better to manage in future than that trash.

 

[ShagnWagn]

Yeah, this was an epic fail. lol. For myself who hasn't tried epic games, this was a very bad introduction to their platform. I'm sorry, but servers being overwhelmed are not going to cause things like random language settings. It will only cause slowdowns or not loading. Something else happened.

No, I didn't own the game as I refused to pay for it. No, I won't keep the their client on my PC. I already have too many. Now that I have a license to play it, I will have to find a pirated version to play it instead if I choose to play it. Hopefully I won't be forced to make evil choices in gameplay. That is where I will have to stop.

 

[ClintL]

I only had a couple issues with launcher when it came out and I have had it on W7 and W10.
Only issues I have now is that I can't stop updates from happening to keep my mods from getting messed up till they are updated as well but that is normal on all clients.

I hate to tell you if you are so sensitive about evil choices then don't play,the 1st mission basically is a "evil" mission,which you will work out later in the game.

 

[noel24]

It's so BROKEN.
Day later and still cannot fire It up.
Social Club Captcha broken.
It's a 7 year old game. I expected all the interested parties already have It, and the only one applying are those who played It on consoles and now wanted to play It on PC.
EPIC FAIL! ;-)

 

[LinxESP]

They did it the the good way, the PCMR way, the Steam Sales way...
I'm not gonna blame them too much... but god I hate the freaking captcha from rockstar its broken af

 

[Fergutor]

In my case it was a pain in the ***, surely due to the quantity of people do in it at the same time, got many errors, long verification and other stuff, took 4 to 5 hours to get the verification email, more errors, but finally it's done.

 

[Porkous]

Yeah, this was an epic fail. lol. For myself who hasn't tried epic games, this was a very bad introduction to their platform. I'm sorry, but

I seen this pattern before. I am not sure why it keeps appearing when people are given free candies and sweets, I imagine this bias is one sided to something, a precious platform of sorts, "steam" probably.

Listen, dude, cool story but the world does no revolve around steam, there are literally 100 million logins on epic right now so try busting the party else where, as people do actually cherish this, even if to holy steam players seems like rubish. Take it or leave it but don't ***** and rebel with pirating stuff here.

iI will have to find a pirated version to play it

Remorse much ?

 

[kmo911]

Im still playing gta 5 and online version. but download speed from server somtimes dies on 1 gb line up/down. annoying beginning mission. inside with cheat enabler jump over driving mission whom dead brain. note : NOW playing skyrim. 1 st of all install from last bacup dvd ees. then update heavy game files wait 4 hour s wait 6-12 ----7777----- repeat repeat. server died dead .. wait up running gone wait wait... arghhhhh

 

[Shadowboxer]

Epic is so much better than steam these days. The free games are awesome. I have a complete library full of games on epic including AAA titles most of which were free.

As for the launcher itself, it’s graphically prettier than steam with less features (that I’ve never used anyway). But who cares, it launches games and it works.

RIP steam if Valve don’t pull their fingers out their bum holes. You know, with steam feeling real pressure from epic now, you would think it might be an idea to release a say - half life 3? But yeah we all know valve hasn’t got the balls for that. Even some better free games would make a difference.

 

[Mister_K]

Epic is so much better than steam these days. The free games are awesome. I have a complete library full of games on epic including AAA titles most of which were free.

As for the launcher itself, it’s graphically prettier than steam with less features (that I’ve never used anyway). But who cares, it launches games and it works.

RIP steam if Valve don’t pull their fingers out their bum holes. You know, with steam feeling real pressure from epic now, you would think it might be an idea to release a say - half life 3? But yeah we all know valve hasn’t got the balls for that. Even some better free games would make a difference.

RIP Steam? Have a laugh. Epicgames is nowhere near Steam level.

 

[Shadowboxer]

RIP Steam? Have a laugh. Epicgames is nowhere near Steam level.

Actually it is;

https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www....e-users-number-cross-play-revenue-valve-steam

And the trend will continue to go in epics favour as long as their free games and game prices are better than steams. I know the numbers are vague and that during global lockdown all platform numbers are going upwards. But they are absolutely comparable.

Of course I don’t want steam to die. I’ve had it since the day it was launched and own around 360 games on it. But I do think it’s time someone came along and did it better. Maybe Epic will become that. But they are already doing free games and game sales better.

 

[Mister_K]

Actually it is;

https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www....e-users-number-cross-play-revenue-valve-steam

And the trend will continue to go in epics favour as long as their free games and game prices are better than steams. I know the numbers are vague and that during global lockdown all platform numbers are going upwards. But they are absolutely comparable.

Of course I don’t want steam to die. I’ve had it since the day it was launched and own around 360 games on it. But I do think it’s time someone came along and did it better. Maybe Epic will become that. But they are already doing free games and game sales better.

I don't see how this proves anything at all? It states the total registered accounts, not active daily users (a stat that matters) which translates into weekly/monthly returning customers (even more important of a stat). Additionally, I wonder if this is due to Fortnite and other games actually requiring an Epic games account which brings users from consoles too (which I believe Steam is missing out on?). Marketing is measured on month on month returns statistics, not "total" numbers. Blizzard used to be great at flexing their X million subs, yet half of them were probably Chinese with the flexi-subscription they had going.

Keyword: Retention.

However, I don't see people actively signing into Epic games, what I see is that majority of my "friends" (quotes as I don't know 90% of them) are on Steam, sure some might be logged into other platforms too.

Lastly, users go where free products are, it's given, and its a temporary boost in activity of the platform. I doubt they will be able to pump out free games forever, but maybe it's just enough. That, combined with the recent Fortnite Travis "concert" will have a lot of buzz around the web and on their activity numbers.

Also you missed this:
"Yet, Epic has a long way to go if it’s to truly compete with Steam, the leading PC game marketplace and the primary storefront Epic is trying to compete against with its more developer-friendly 88-12 percent revenue split. In 2017, Valve is estimated to have earned more than $4 billion in revenue from just game sales, and that doesn’t even include microtransactions, downloadable content like expansion passes, and other digital goods."

HOWEVER, you are right, Steam DOES need to step up a notch. Free games is a start, better events for the community and third-party developer support, pay them better! Valve needs to develop more games as well, they're becoming like Blizzard. Stagnant and comfy at their throne.

 

[DaveBG]

Yeah, this was an epic fail. lol. For myself who hasn't tried epic games, this was a very bad introduction to their platform. I'm sorry, but servers being overwhelmed are not going to cause things like random language settings. It will only cause slowdowns or not loading. Something else happened.

No, I didn't own the game as I refused to pay for it. No, I won't keep the their client on my PC. I already have too many. Now that I have a license to play it, I will have to find a pirated version to play it instead if I choose to play it. Hopefully I won't be forced to make evil choices in gameplay. That is where I will have to stop.

They gave out Just Cause 4 for free too. Your loss. And BTW without the client you will not be able to play it.

 

[Lounds]

Anyone saying STEAM is dead is living in a dream world.

 

[Porkous]

This is the reason why the discussion should not exist at all. What is steam? a distribution platform. What does that have to do with your games? You should play the game and not care about a platform today, or tomorrow. But because the stores are a closed environment, automatically when you think of games, you think of the platform itself. In a decent world, you should not give 2 cents about the client, and be free to uninstall it at anytime without having attachments to it. Why people care so much about a interface and anything else? You own the games, not steam, so you are free to choose, not steam to choose for you, or epic store. The games come from the devs, not that platform. Anytime a developer could rent a server and sell you the game and get the cut it deserves.

 

[Jackwoz]

It's so BROKEN.
Day later and still cannot fire It up.
Social Club Captcha broken.
It's a 7 year old game. I expected all the interested parties already have It, and the only one applying are those who played It on consoles and now wanted to play It on PC.
EPIC FAIL! ;-)

I thought mine was broken, but once you click a tile you have to wait until more appear then when there are no more pictures of what ever it says, then click verify

 

[ShagnWagn]

They gave out Just Cause 4 for free too. Your loss. And BTW without the client you will not be able to play it.

Seriously? The pirated version will not allow me to play it without the epic games client? Dang. That's odd. Can you provide a link that says this? All I wanted was the license saying I have rights to play it.

 

[DaveBG]

Seriously? The pirated version will not allow me to play it without the epic games client? Dang. That's odd. Can you provide a link that says this? All I wanted was the license saying I have rights to play it.

The pirated version does not have updates and does not have the online mode. For a free game both ways I would choose the one that has all that.