One of the highlights for gamers this holiday was Epic Games offering a free copy of Hideo Kojima’s Death Stranding on Christmas Day, but the promotion didn’t quite go according to plan, with the Epic Games Store accidentally offering the Director’s Cut during the initial phase of the promotion, something that resulted in not only the company’s servers being completely hammered, but users fuming about how they couldn’t claim what had been temporarily but clearly advertised.
The Epic Games Store has now apologized for its mix-up, sharing a message on Chinese social media website Weibo that suggests the blame can be placed entirely on an intern with Epic Games, who may or may not still be at the company, as translated by a NeoGAF user.
“An Epic employee (currently an Intern) mistakenly set up the free game as Death Stranding Director’s Cut instead of the Standard Edition last night,” the statement posted on Weibo reads. “Our agreement with the publisher was that only the standard version would be released for free, and our team made a mistake. We are currently in discussions with the publisher about this issue.”
“We apologize to those who were unable to obtain the Director’s Cut and are truly sorry.”
It’s unclear how many people were able to claim a free copy of Death Stranding Director’s Cut, a definitive version of the game that Kojima Productions released for the PC in March 2022.
Initially released for the PlayStation 5, Death Stranding Director’s Cut features a number of improvements over the original 2019 action game, including new locations, weapons, missions, and more.
It was also one of the first PC games to receive support for XeSS, Intel’s upscaling technology.
Death Stranding Director’s Cut is currently listed for $23.99 on the Epic Games Store as part of its holiday sale, which ends on Thursday, January 5.