If you try using an Oculus Rift today to escape the pain of reality, then things won't go so well for you. Upon trying to open the Oculus app, which is required to access games and software, you'll find a big error awaiting you that prevents it from booting.

Thousands of VR enthusiasts have headed to forums and social media to report the error, which reads, "Can't Reach Oculus Runtime Service". As it turns out the cataclysmic issue is related to an outdated certificate that Oculus forgot to renew. Ouch.

The certificate is required to run the driver for Oculus VR, meaning that for the time being the headset is effectively dead. However, Oculus is well aware of the issue, and its co-founder Nate Mitchell posted the following on Twitter to give people hope:

We're aware of an issue affecting Rift on PC, and we're working on resolving now. Stay tuned.

— Nate Mitchell (@natemitchell) March 7, 2018

For VR addicts like myself, this is basically armageddon. What am I gonna do? Thankfully, you can rewind the date on your PC to pre-March 7th, which will fool the certificate into thinking it isn't expired. Just be sure to disable automatic date/time updating when you do this.

Also Read: The 10 Best VR Games You Should Play After Getting A VR Headset In 2018

The VR market has seen incredible growth during the past few months thanks to reduced price of entry and a growing number of titles that are worth playing for more than 15 minutes, particularly VRChat.