Rockstar's smash hit Grand Theft Auto V ran into online difficulties over the weekend after being given away for free on the Epic Games Store.

In a post on Twitter yesterday (Sunday, May 17th), the studio said that it was experiencing issues "due to extremely high player volumes." In a post a few hours later, Rockstar's support account said that the problems had been resolved.

This follows Fortnite maker Epic making Grand Theft Auto V available entirely free of charge last week. The game has shifted more than 115m units since its launch back in September 2013. At that point, GTA V was only available on PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, but the title made the leap to the next-gen PlayStation 4 and Xbox One consoles in November of the following year. That was before a PC release in April 2015.

The game is still a strong seller almost seven years after its launch. It regularly appears in the Steam Top Ten even today, and was the best-selling game of the last decade in both the US and UK.

There are reports that Rockstar is – of course – making a new entry in the Grand Theft Auto series. This is apparently going to be a relatively small launch, with new content added over time. This will be the first Grand Theft Auto title made without Rockstar co-founder Dan Houser, who departed the company in March of this year and had been on an "extended break" since the previous spring.

Epic has apparently given away more than $2,000 worth of games for free on its storefront since it launched at the end of 2018.