A recent software update resulted in a significant number of bricked Meta Quest headsets, with Meta initially shrugging and saying that for out-of-warranty Quest 2/3/3S models it wouldn’t be fixing the problem …

Unsurprisingly, customers were unimpressed by Meta killing their products and then seemingly expecting them to buy new ones.

Just like many others, my headset crashed and wouldn’t turn on when I tried to update on December 5th. I contacted Meta support, and after troubleshooting, they informed me that the headset is dead, and I will need to purchase a new one.

Others pointed out that it was a dumb move even if Meta only considered its own interests.

The unit cost me £200. In Q3 2024, Meta posted over $15 billion dollar profit. That’s just shy of $2000 per second!

If 1000 people had their devices hard-bricked out of warranty and assuming a $100 net value of the device to Meta, they could replace them all and only incur a 50-second impact on profit to their bottom line.

They’ve spent more time (and thus time/money paying people) trying to argue and negotiate the support cases than it would have been to just mass replace the devices and in the process avoid the PR train wreck.

All the more so when the issue affected a model many bought as Christmas gifts.

The company now seems to have realized the idiocy of its previous stance, and says it’s working on a fix.

We’ve discovered a software update issue that caused some Quest 2/3/3S headsets to be unresponsive and unable to start up correctly. We are actively working on resolving the issue for all users, but in most cases, you are now able to use your device normally.

If you have a device that is still unresponsive, we’re here to help. If you have a Quest 3S, click the link for next steps. Quest 2 or 3 users, please reach out to us to get support. Thank you for your understanding.

Photo by Adrià García Sarceda on Unsplash