In a move that seems drastically at odds with Meta’s previous complaints regarding the 30% charges that companies such as Apple charge on their App Store, Meta has announced that it will charge creators up to 47.5% to be allowed to sell wares in the metaverse.
Meta stated in a blog post that it is testing virtual sales inside Horizon Worlds, its metaverse platform. Creators will be able to sell items like fashion accessories for their users’ avatars as well as get exclusive access to parts of their customized virtual worlds.
CEO of Meta, Mark Zuckerberg had previously criticised Apple’s 30% charge for in-app purchases via the App Store. In a Facebook post in late 2021, Zuckerberg said that Meta was making changes to the metaverse that’ll help creators stay away from Apple’s App Store charges.
He wrote: “As we build for the metaverse, we’re focused on unlocking opportunities for creators to make money from their work. The 30% fees that Apple takes on transactions make it harder to do that, so we’re updating our subscriptions product so now creators can earn more.”
Currently, Meta charges a fee of 30% for every sale made on its virtual reality system formerly known as Oculus, now Meta Quest. Additionally, the company’s metaverse system, Horizon Worlds will charge creators a 25% sales fee.
In this case, Meta’s cut will be 47.5% from sale price, leaving the seller with 52.5%
You do the math…
A Meta spokesperson said the math was indeed correct by saying:
“If a creator sells an item for $1.00, then the Meta Quest Store fee would be $0.30 and the Horizon Platform fee would be $0.17 (25% of the remainder), leaving $0.53 for the Creator before any applicable taxes. Over time, we plan to bring Horizon Worlds to more platforms and so the platform fee won’t always be going to Meta, said the spokesperson. As Horizon Worlds rolls out to more platforms like mobile, we expect those platforms to charge their own fee. The Horizon Worlds fee which is 25 percent of the remainder would be applied after any relevant hardware platform fee has been applied.”
According to Vivek Sharma, Meta’s VP of Horizon via the Verge, “We think it’s a pretty competitive rate in the market. We believe in the other platforms being able to have their share.”
Meta also said that only a “handful” of creators would have trial access to the virtual sales feature for now without giving out the exact number of creators that’ll have access to the trials. The company concluded its post by saying in-world sales will be available for users in US and Canada from 18 years above.
Isa Muhammad is a writer and video game journalist covering many aspects of entertainment media including the film industry. He's steadily writing his way to the sharp end of journalism and enjoys staying informed. If he's not reading, playing video games or catching up on his favourite TV series, then he's probably writing about them.
