Update: Oculus has released an early morning patch to correct the problem. If you've started up your Rift and encountered the error, you'll need to download and apply the patch manually. If you haven't started up your Rift since yesterday or aren't encountering the error, the update will be automatically applied for you. Oculus also says it will give all affected users a $15 Oculus Store credit.

Original story: Oculus Rift users worldwide found today that their headsets stopped working completely. Users encountered a "Can't Reach Oculus runtime Service" error, which prevented further use of the headset. The problem appears to affect most, if not all, Oculus Rift headsets.

Users began reporting the issue in the Oculus forums, and Oculus tweeted an acknowledgment of the problem at 12:26 PM today, along with a link to a support forum post on the subject, which simply says the following:

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.

Users on the Oculus forums and Discord discovered that OculusAppFramework.dll failed to validate with OVRServer, which is the local Oculus runtime service. Oculus forum user Mace404 shared a screenshot that suggested the issue may be caused by an expired certificate. This appears to be a code-signing issue. If that's the case, the only way to fix it would be for Oculus to release an update.

There are numerous complaints on Twitter from users who were working in VR but have seen their work days grind to a halt or those who were performing demos for important audiences only to be unable to complete them. Some users have reported that changing a computer's date to an earlier one makes the Oculus usable.

Oculus has not provided an ETA for a fix, but in the meantime, Oculus co-founder Nate Mitchell has promised to post updates to a Reddit thread the company created.