Oculus Rift owners discovered that their headsets had stopped working yesterday, thanks to an expired certificate. It appears Oculus forgot to renew its security certificate, causing part of the Rift app to crash and prevent access to its VR software. While temporary fixes involved setting a computer’s date to earlier in the week, Oculus is now issuing a software update to fix the problem.
Oculus brings Rift VR headsets back to life with a software fix
is a senior correspondent and author of Notepad, who has been covering all things Microsoft, PC, and tech for over 20 years.
The fix is available from the Oculus Rift website, and includes a certificate that hasn’t expired. Oculus thanked owners for their patience in a Twitter message today, and co-founder Nate Mitchell apologized for the embarrassing lapse. Mitchell also promised Rift owners affected by the issues “will be provided with an Oculus store credit.”
This isn’t the first time we’ve seen expired certificates affect big software platforms. In November 2015 Mac owners were forced to delete and reinstall software they’d downloaded from the App Store thanks to an expired security certificate. This Oculus incident is just the latest reminder for developers to ensure they’re renewing certificates in a timely fashion.
Update, 5AM ET: Article updated with Oculus’ apology.
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