The Zuck that stole Christmas

I got Meta’s flagship Quest 3 headset last year. Not only did I love it and use it all the time — as described in my April feature on VR  — but so did my sister, who would play Beatsaber every time she visited. As a good brother, it was pretty obvious what this year’s Christmas present for her should be, so I picked up a late-model version of the Quest 2 and a bunch of the most premium accessories. When she opened it on Christmas morning, she had tears in her eyes, so happy to have her own headset and play Beatsaber whenever she wanted — and to do so in multiplayer with me, despite us living countries apart.

She put it on and went through the initial set-up, at which point the headset said it needed to download an update, and she left it to install. But when she tried it again, the headset was dead. It wasn’t that the headset wouldn’t turn on. The charging light wouldn’t turn on when plugged in, and the prompts to hard reset and get into the boot menu didn’t do anything. With one (presumably rushed) holiday update, Meta had turned “the best present of all time” into a rather expensive paper-weight. My sister and I were hardly alone.

Starting on Christmas Eve, Meta released a new software update for all Meta headsets, right in time for the rush of new users who bought them for Christmas (the accompanying app quickly shot up the charts). If you are using a current headset, entirely up to date with the latest software, then the update would probably be OK; but if your headset was brand new or had been sitting around for a while, then this new update — build 73.0 — could completely fry your headset. This mainly affects the older Quest 2, but it has also killed the current generation Quest 3S and Quest 3; and though Meta has paused updates to headsets and is promising a software update, that won’t fix the bricked headsets.

By opening the headset, swapping out the printed circuit board (PCB) and reinstalling their operating system, it should all work again, but that is something Meta will do internally, to turn these “bricks” into refurbished units, rather than something that can be done at home. If your Christmas present headset is dead, you have to wait.

If your device is out of warranty, Meta initially offered some British users a £150 trade-in for a replacement, refurbished unit, and devices in warranty could get a free replacement so long as they have all the information, including the device and box serial number. If you threw out the box months ago (because it was a brand new device, bought as a present for a family member), then Meta currently will do squat for you. That’s where I sit right now.

Companies try to mess around with situations like this, offering gift cards to affected customers, but this affects so many devices that Meta can’t do that. They have acknowledged the issue and are working on a new software update for unaffected units — and I wouldn’t be surprised if Meta found itself recalling and replacing all bricked units.

No matter what they do though, they can’t undo the sadness, disappointment and time-wasting frustration that this presumably rushed update caused. My sister should have been playing her headset, dancing to “Toxic,” having a whale of a time. Instead, I spent my morning reading forum entries and getting nowhere in my over two-hour-long text exchange with their tech support person. Good work, Zuck.