Is Epic Games Store down (December 25)? Possible reason, fixes, and more

The Epic Games Store Holiday Sale is a 15-day program that was going strong until the site's servers were reportedly overloaded by the Christmas Day free offering, Death Stranding. Hideo Kojima's three-year-old masterpiece was clearly a massive pull for many gamers looking to grab the game for free. The digital storefront saw a massive rise in traffic because of the deal, and this seems to be causing different kinds of problems.

The Epic Games Store's official Twitter account has come out acknowledging an issue preventing people from logging in to their accounts and has promised to fix the problem as quickly as possible.

The Holiday Sale started on December 15 and features massive discounts on major titles. Moreover, Epic Games is giving away one game for free every day during the event. However, when the Fortnite developers offered Death Stranding, the servers started experiencing issues within hours of the announcement. As things stand currently, while the Epic Games Store can still be accessed, some of its most significant services are not working.

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Increased traffic due to Christmas Day free game causing problems for Epic Games servers

Though there have been no official reasons given for the issues players have been experiencing trying to access the digital storefront recently, it seems like the latest free offering played a big part in the server's current problems.

The issues range from players being unable to log in to the Epic Games Store to many failing to add Death Stranding to their library due to an internal error. At the time of writing this piece, trying to claim the game results in a specific problem. The error message cites high traffic as the reason gamers aren't able to complete the transaction. It reads:

"We are experiencing high transaction volume, please try again later."

Screenshot of the error screen (Image via Sportskeeda)

Players have flooded social media to bring attention to the issue, and many concluded that Death Stranding was to blame for it:

Others cited instances of how they were unable to claim the game, with a few reporting that they were unable to complete the transaction due to login errors. Users even said that trying to get the title was logging them out of their accounts:

One gamer said that while they claimed the game, it has not been added to their library.

A group of people has been raising complaints regarding the edition that is being handed out. They stated that some individuals were able to get Death Stranding Director's Cut, while for others, it was downgraded to the Standard Edition after a while.

With the Death Stranding 2 announcement trailer released during the Game Awards 2022, the excitement around the franchise is pretty high. While players do appreciate Epic Games for giving away the first title free of cost, issues with the launcher and digital store appear to persist, even though a couple of hours have passed since Death Stranding was released.

Let's hope Epic Games fixes the issue soon, allowing players who do not own Death Stranding on PC to play the game for free.