Source: New York Post
Meta Platforms Inc. plans to take a cut of about 47.5% on the digital commodities on Horizon Worlds, which its virtual reality platform. In turn, that is a crucial part of the social media giants’ plans for making what they refer to as “Metaverse.” The company made announcements regarding this on Monday, April 11, in a blog post. In the post, they mentioned that they a letting a few of Horizon World creators sell virtual assets. Horizon World is free virtual reality, online video game that enables people to make and explore virtual worlds. This would be within the universe in the making, and could include NFTs. But, the giant was unable to state in the post how much they would charge the creators to sell their commodities.
On Wednesday, April 13, a spokesperson from Meta confirmed that the company would charge an overall cut of up to 47.5% on ever transaction. This would include a fee for “hardware platform” of 30% for sales carried out through the Meta Quest Store. This is where it sells the apps and games for headsets for virtual reality. Additionally, the platform Horizon World would charge a fee of 17.5% more. Clearly, the size of the cut has enraged some in the NFT community post them specifying the entire cut.
One Twitter user wrote: “I hate you Facebook.” Another said: “If Meta wants 47.5% of NFT sales they gotta talk to the IRS because I don’t even have that after taxes.”
In past few months, various companies and people have been constantly trying to get the best of everything from art to real state in virtual worlds. Specifically, these entities have been targeting to get the best of these on platforms like Decentraland and The SandBox. Hip-hop star Snoop Dogg had bought virtual land in The SandBox. Incidentally, a fan paid $450,000 last December to purchase a plot right next to him on that platform. Meta Vice President of Horizon, Vivek Sharma stated that with the current competitiveness in the market, the company in other platforms being able to get their share.
Clearly, Meta’s charge for the sale of virtual assets on the virtual reality platform is quite more than the commission charged by Apple on developers on the App store. Previously, Chief Executive Zuckerberg and other executives of the company had criticised Apple for charging developers the 30% fee for in-app purchases from its App Store. Moreover, he stated that Meta was attempting help metaverse creators avoid the App Store fee charged by Apple.