Grand Theft Auto V Is Going To Be Free On PC [Update: Epic Game Store Was Down But It's Working Again]

If you somehow don’t already own Grand Theft Auto V you’ll soon be able to get it for free on PC through the Epic Games Store.

According to a now deleted tweet, GTA V will be the digital storefront’s latest free game, available to download and keep starting sometime soon until May 21. The Epic Games Store had previously teased the game last week, tweeting out a picture of a giant bank vault.

Originally released in 2013 on PS3 and Xbox 360, GTA V has remained one of the current console generation’s perennially best-selling games, thanks in large part to its thriving GTA Online community where players can go on heists together, hoard cash, and indulge in all sorts of weirder shenanigans.

Normally $30, the game was previously free-to-play for a limited time for Game Pass subscribers on Xbox One earlier this year. Now it’ll be free for anyone with a PC that can run it, likely a small price for Rockstar to pay in exchange for an influx of new players into its microtransaction economy.

Update: 11:58 a.m. ET: “We are currently experiencing high traffic on the Epic Games Store,” Epic announced on Twitter this morning. Epic says users are currently encountering slow load times, 500 errors, and crashes.

Sure enough, when I tried to load the Epic Games Store launcher on my desktop this morning here’s what I got:

It’s not clear if this is the result of people rushing to get GTA V when it becomes free on the store today, or some other issue. Fortnite is also apparently experiencing outages at the moment on PC and Mac.

Update: 8:02 a.m. ET, 5/15/20: The store and launcher are working again. According to an update from Epic last night, fixes have been deployed to resolve the outages for most people.

Update, 11:16 a.m. ET, 5/15/20: Epic now reports that some players are having a tough time downloading free games. It says anyone getting an error message should wait 24 hours and try again: