Apparently, the Oculus Rift community worldwide just went dark after an error message surprised all the device owners around the world, causing a massive worldwide shutdown of all devices.

The bizarre incident caused quite a rift between the device users and the virtual reality (VR) headset itself when users started encountering an error message that read "Can't Reach Oculus Runtime Service." This prevented further use of the headset where most — if not all — the device owners had their devices become unusable.

Some of the tech-savvy users of the VR headset had to take matters into their own hands and thankfully discovered the cause of the issue. People from both the Oculus website forum and forum app Discord discovered that OculusAppFramework.dll failed to validate with OVRServer, which is the local Oculus runtime service. Users believed that this expired certificate was what caused the worldwide issue. Apparently, the only way for it to be fixed was for Oculus to release a software update.

A lot of users also took the forums in a swarm and posted about the problem, to which Oculus responded with: "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 said company was quick to follow-through on the software issue and immediately released a software patch or update to correct the problem. Users affected by said error message need only download and apply the patch manually through their computers where the Rift VR headset is connected.

Apparently, the suspicion of some users about an expired digital license certificate was true and that Oculus simply forgot to renew it. As for the disgruntled users whose work or other important activities have been disrupted by the sudden worldwide shutdown, Nate Mitchell of Oculus promised that Rift owners affected by the issues "will be provided with an Oculus store credit" as compensation.