Meta's locked bootloader complicates matters, as it prevents users from manually flashing custom operating systems or downgrading to previous versions of Horizon OS, increasing vulnerability to such issues.

In December 2024, a significant firmware update caused many Quest 2 headsets to experience a 'boot loop' issue, rendering them unusable.

Mark Rabkin, Meta's VP of Quest and Horizon OS, attributed the issue to a rare race condition in the AOSP R/W ext4 filesystem that corrupts files, coupled with a security patch that prevents OS rollback.

This incident is part of a troubling pattern of outages for Meta, which includes a major outage in 2018 when all Oculus Rift headsets failed due to an expired certificate, as well as a server error in March 2024 that temporarily disabled Quest headsets.

To regain consumer trust and compete effectively with companies like Apple, Meta may need to rethink its software update policies and enhance the resilience of its devices.

The race condition occurs when different parts of multithreaded software execute in an unexpected order, ultimately leading to system failure.

This bug had been present for four years but only led to widespread problems due to the specific conditions of the recent firmware update.

In response to the crisis, Meta acknowledged the problem by the end of December and offered free replacements for bricked devices, even those out of warranty.