Rockstar's wildly popular Grand Theft Auto 5 is the latest free game to hit the Epic Games Store

The initial announcement came from a now-deleted Epic Games Store tweet, which claimed that Rockstar's popular open-world crime game would be available for free download on PC until May 21 The game's appearance caused the Epic Games Store to crash for several hours, but it appears to be stable as of May 15

Epic Games is offering a "Premium Edition" of Grand Theft Auto 5, which includes the base game and the multiplayer component of GTA Online, as well as an in-game to start an online adventure It also includes the Criminal Enterprise Starter Pack, which gives you $1 million in cash

To get GTA 5 for PC for free, you must download the Epic Games Store launcher and create an Epic Games account

From there, simply scroll down to the "Free Games" section of the store and select Grand Theft Auto 5 In order to get the free game, you will need to enable two-factor authentication Once set up, you have until 11:00 am ET on May 21 to get GTA 5 for free

According to the GTA 5 system requirements, the game requires at least an Intel Core 2 Quad CPU Q6600, 4GB of RAM, an Nvidia 9800GT/AMD 4870 or better, and 72GB of storage to run However, the recommended specs are a Core i5 CPU, GTX 660 or higher, and 8GB RAM minimum

It is unclear if the Epic Games store's "GTA 5" supports cross-play with the Steam version, but it's worth keeping in mind if you plan to get your hands on the very popular and still updating "GTA Online"

The Epic Games Store has been giving away free games every month since late 2018, with past highlights including "The Witness," "Overcooked," "Batman Arkham Collection," and "Rayman Legends" However, "GTA 5" is by far the biggest free gift the service has secured, and may be the best way to stave off boredom during incarceration