Popular video game publisher Rockstar Games, primarily known as the developer behind immensely popular and masterful video game titles such as Max Payne, the Grand Theft Auto (GTA) series, and the Red Dead Redemption series, has recently announced that it’s currently experiencing widespread issues with it’s servers. These issues are primarily focused on Grand Theft Auto V’s Online mode, as GTA 5’s servers are unfortunately down.
The American video game publishing company posted a message on Twitter, stating, “Due to extremely high player volumes, we are currently experiencing issues with access to Rockstar Games Services including the Rockstar Games Launcher and GTAV for PC. We are actively working to resolve the issue and will keep you updated of any changes.”
Reports of issues with the GTA 5 Online servers started coming in on Friday, May 15th, and have been steadily rising since then. Out of those affected the vast majority (81 per cent) are experiencing issues with online play, while others are having Social Club issues. Independent outage monitor Down Detector registered a big spike of “GTA Online dysfunctional” reports again today, with the latest outage seeing a peak of over 3,000 reports. This latest batch of GTA Online down reports was registered after 7am BST, and marked the third day in a row of Grand Theft Auto server problems. The Down Detector outage map says the GTA Online down issues are mainly affecting users in the UK, US and Europe.`
Such reports became quite common after, just a few days ago, Rockstar’s GTA 5 amazingly became a part of the Epic Games Store’s latest free game offering. The company is offering the game free of cost to those who are willing to install the Epic Games Store launcher on their PC or Mac. Users can download GTA V for free until May 21st. Thankfully, though, the good news doesn’t end here. It turns out that the premium edition of the game, which starts you off with limited edition gear and a decent amount of in-game currency, is being offered for free. Trust me, folks, it can’t get any better than this!
The decision to provide Grand Theft Auto V for free put a strain on Rockstar’s servers, as demand for the online multiplayer feature is higher than ever. Not only did this negatively affect Rockstar’s servers, but Epic Games also recently announced that the Epic Games Store servers were running slower than usual and crashing frequently due to a very high number of people attempting to download the free game.
