Oculus has fixed the Rift outage that affected all users (Updated)
Problem solved.
Update: Oculus has released a fix for the problem—go here for instructions. The company's co-founder said that anybody impacted by the downtime, which was caused by an expired certificate linked to the devices, will receive some in-store credit. (Update: it's $15.) Scroll down for the original story.
Rift is back online as of ~12am. This was a mistake on our end, and we apologize. Folks impacted by today's downtime will be provided with an Oculus store credit. More details to follow soon. Thanks again for everyone's patience as we worked through this one.March 8, 2018
Original story:
If you're having trouble with your Oculus Rift today, then you're not alone. A certificate linked to the devices has expired and caused them to stop working, with users facing a "Can't Reach Oculus Runtime Service" error if they try to boot up. Oculus is aware of the problem and is working on a fix.
The problem appears to be affecting all users. It was first flagged on the Oculus forums, and some quick digging uncovered the fact that a certificate for the Oculus Runtime Service expired earlier today, which is a pretty big oversight on Oculus's part.
On the forums, a spokesperson said: "We are aware of and actively investigating an issue impacting ability to access Rift software. Our teams apologize for any inconvenience this may be causing you and appreciate your patience while we work on a resolution. We'll share more updates here as we have them. Thanks."
The company's co-founder also tweeted this:
We're aware of an issue affecting Rift on PC, and we're working on resolving now. Stay tuned.March 7, 2018
Oculus has said it will also provide updates in this Reddit thread about the issue.
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Some users have changed their system clocks to before when the certificate expired as a temporary workaround, but I wouldn't advise it. As this Reddit user pointed out, messing with the system clock could have unintended consequences for other software on your PC. It's probably best to just wait for Oculus to fix it, unfortunately.
Thanks, Windows Central.
Samuel Horti is a long-time freelance writer for PC Gamer based in the UK, who loves RPGs and making long lists of games he'll never have time to play.