Epic Games’s digital store has crashed amid a rush to get hold of Grand Theft Auto V for free.

A leaked tweet suggested that the PC version of the hit 2013 title would be available as part of the store’s weekly giveaway.

The promotion gives players a week to download GTA V to keep, before it is replaced with a new title on May 21.

“We are currently experiencing high traffic on the Epic Games Store,” the firm wrote on Twitter just after 4pm on Thursday, when the free download was due to be officially unveiled.

“We are aware that users may be encountering slow loading times, 500 errors, or launcher crashing at this time and we are actively working to scale.

“We’ll provide an update as soon as we can.”

It appears that the incident may also be having an impact on other Epic services, with its official Fortnite support account saying it is “investigating issues on PC and Mac that may impact Launcher logins and in-game purchases”.