Meta to charge content creators almost 50% to sell VR content
Meta's charges to content producers for Horizon Worlds' may be seen as hypocritical, with the social company potentially clawing in almost half the value of virtual item purchases, despite previous complaints about Apple's 30% App Store fee.

An example of a content payment interface in Horizon Worlds
Meta's "Horizon Worlds" is the company's first major foray into creating a metaverse platform for its Quest VR headset owners. However, experiments to enable content creators to earn from the sale of in-world content may find Meta the subject of criticism, due to its previous anti-Apple comments.
It was revealed on Monday by The Verge that Meta would charge creators a 25% cut of digital content intended for Horizon Worlds. However, this is actually a cut from funds that will have already been charged a 30% platform fee via the Quest Store, which again is owned by Meta.
According to Meta's VP of Horizon, Vivek Sharma, this is a "pretty competitive rate in the market," adding "We believe in the other platforms being able to have their share."
With the app expected to expand from VR headsets to mobile devices and other platforms, Sharma's comments seem to indicate that the 25% will be independent of whatever charges the platform takes. In effect, if launched on iOS, Apple would receive its standard 30% fee for App Store in-app purchases.
The problem comes in when you consider how much Meta stands to benefit from content sold via its own Quest Store. After its own 30% platform fee, the 25% cut is taken from the remaining 70%, so Meta will receive 47.5% of the value of sold content while content creators receive 52.5%.
The fees and comments could be considered hypocritical by industry observers who saw how pre-Meta-rebrand Facebook fought Apple's 30% fee.
In August 2020, shortly after Epic Games filed its lawsuit against Apple, Facebook app executive Fidji Simo openly complained about the App Store fee, declaring that it hurt small business owners attempting to recover from the effects of the COVID-19pandemic.
Later the same month, Facebook said Apple rejected a transparency notice the social network attempted to provide to users, alerting them to the 30% App Store fee. Facebook again framed it as attempting to "help people understand where money they intend for small businesses actually goes."
Facebook raised the issue again in June 2021, insisting it wanted to promote "offline transactions" between creators and companies, again to avoid having to pay Apple's 30% fee.
While Meta's maximum 47.5% cut is high, it's not as bad as the situation with Roblox. In August, a report into developers for the platform revealed content creators had a hard time earning revenue.
Part of it is due to content creators receiving around 35% of the purchase price, with the remainder going to various fees incurred via Roblox's platform, as well as the App Store fee.
For creators working on Horizon Worlds, it won't be the only way to earn money from the project. US-based creators will be able to earn from a $10 million creator fund, which will reward those who produce the most-engaging experiences.
Read on AppleInsider

An example of a content payment interface in Horizon Worlds
Meta's "Horizon Worlds" is the company's first major foray into creating a metaverse platform for its Quest VR headset owners. However, experiments to enable content creators to earn from the sale of in-world content may find Meta the subject of criticism, due to its previous anti-Apple comments.
It was revealed on Monday by The Verge that Meta would charge creators a 25% cut of digital content intended for Horizon Worlds. However, this is actually a cut from funds that will have already been charged a 30% platform fee via the Quest Store, which again is owned by Meta.
According to Meta's VP of Horizon, Vivek Sharma, this is a "pretty competitive rate in the market," adding "We believe in the other platforms being able to have their share."
With the app expected to expand from VR headsets to mobile devices and other platforms, Sharma's comments seem to indicate that the 25% will be independent of whatever charges the platform takes. In effect, if launched on iOS, Apple would receive its standard 30% fee for App Store in-app purchases.
The problem comes in when you consider how much Meta stands to benefit from content sold via its own Quest Store. After its own 30% platform fee, the 25% cut is taken from the remaining 70%, so Meta will receive 47.5% of the value of sold content while content creators receive 52.5%.
The fees and comments could be considered hypocritical by industry observers who saw how pre-Meta-rebrand Facebook fought Apple's 30% fee.
In August 2020, shortly after Epic Games filed its lawsuit against Apple, Facebook app executive Fidji Simo openly complained about the App Store fee, declaring that it hurt small business owners attempting to recover from the effects of the COVID-19pandemic.
Later the same month, Facebook said Apple rejected a transparency notice the social network attempted to provide to users, alerting them to the 30% App Store fee. Facebook again framed it as attempting to "help people understand where money they intend for small businesses actually goes."
Facebook raised the issue again in June 2021, insisting it wanted to promote "offline transactions" between creators and companies, again to avoid having to pay Apple's 30% fee.
While Meta's maximum 47.5% cut is high, it's not as bad as the situation with Roblox. In August, a report into developers for the platform revealed content creators had a hard time earning revenue.
Part of it is due to content creators receiving around 35% of the purchase price, with the remainder going to various fees incurred via Roblox's platform, as well as the App Store fee.
For creators working on Horizon Worlds, it won't be the only way to earn money from the project. US-based creators will be able to earn from a $10 million creator fund, which will reward those who produce the most-engaging experiences.
Read on AppleInsider
Comments
The irony of it all. Apple makes the first easy-to-use Personal Computer which was a true revolution in 1984 with the Macintosh. Steve Jobs leaves Apple, Apple gets major flak for the next 12 plus years from the Wintel crowd, Steve Jobs returns and brings the company back to health, revolutionizes the smartphone industry, Steve passes, and Apple goes on to be a trillion-dollar company, multi-billion dollar app developers and European countries criticize, sue and fine Apple for making a profit.
Also, "literally every single tech company" is fabulist hyperbole. The ones with a clear path to profit are pushing to make it happen, the ones with enough money to cover their FOMO are spending enough to not be left behind while they wait to see how things go, and the rest are working on AI and/or their existing services portfolio.
This article tells us that the "developer community" for the new "platform" is also going to face serious headwinds when it comes to building stuff to sell. So, yes, it's another reason for the metaverse to fail: firstly, consumer apathy needs to be overcome, and secondly the ecosystem is unlikely to flourish because Facebook wants to collect rent as a (hefty!) percentage of sales. Look at fairly recent history: video calling only took off because of the CoVID-19 measures (after 15 years or so of availability) and has never had an ecosystem, 3-D movies/TV shows had a lot of money thrown at them but remain nowhere, iPhone software development started with massive demand but the ecosystem is struggling because Apple is the gatekeeper extracting rent for market activity on its platform, Windows Mobile died a lingering death despite Microsoft paying substantial amounts to third-party developers for native apps.
Frankly, if the metaverse is to succeed to the level its promoters are suggesting, it needs to be a system controlled by a non-profit organisation and based on open protocols - just like the internet and the world wide web. I don't see that happening.
Companies that make a profit from their 3rd parties using their business platform:
Amazon
Wal-Mart
Nintendo
Sony
Microsoft
Facebook
Kroger
Spotify
Steam
Lots of companies were conviced 3D television was the future too.
Count me out for metaverse too; no interest.
Didn't say A=B. What I said is companies can be wrong. Why do you have such poor comprehension?