Death Stranding is free on the Epic Games Store and it crashed the servers

Epic Games Store's free game for December 25-26 was Death Stranding, and the servers couldn't handle the number of people claiming the deal

If you’re waking up on Boxing Day morning and sighing that the Christmas excitement is all over, worry not. Although you may have missed it in amongst all the presents and turkey of the day, the Epic Games Store released their daily free game which, for today, is Death Stranding. It will be available to claim for free until December 26 at 8am PT/11am ET/4pm GMT.

This game, first released in 2019 has all the hype behind it, as it was the first game released by Kojima Productions since Hideo Kojima left Konami and was controversially ejected from the Metal Gear Solid series.

The story is as weird as you’d expect from a man who says he will one day become an AI, with strange character names like Sam Porter Bridges, Die-Hardman, and Geoff Keighley. The actual gameplay is significantly less weird, as you’ll be navigating hostile terrain to ferry packages around the world on your back.

If that wasn’t enough reason to pick up this title, the sequel recently had its first trailer revealed at The Game Awards, so you may as well catch up now.

Such a high-profile game being given away for free is a big deal, even if it is a few years old. In fact, it’s turned out to be such a big deal that everyone rushing to it broke the Epic Games Store’s servers.

Not very long after Death Stranding became available for free, lots of people rushed to it and the store’s servers couldn’t handle the load. For a little while, anyone attempting to log into the store wasn’t able to, and anyone who was already logged in couldn’t access any of their account information, with the store incorrectly prompting people to log in again.

After a couple of hours, the servers came back online and have been fine ever since, but there was still a little more controversy after that.

When the game first became free, it was the Director’s Cut edition which includes things like photo mode, ultra-wide monitor support, and crossover content from Half-Life and Cyberpunk 2077. However, roughly 90 minutes later it was switched to the standard edition of the game, meaning anyone would have to buy the upgrade for the extra content.

There was no explanation given for it, but if you missed out on the Director’s Cut for free, the upgrade for the standard edition is 40% right now, so it will cost you just $6.