- Out of the 47.5% fee, 30% will go to Meta Quest Store and 17.% to Horizon Worlds.
- Meta’s fee is 19x higher than OpenSea, which charges 2.5% per transaction.
- Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg previously criticized Apple for its 30% fee, saying it is too high.
Meta, Facebook’s parent company, will levy a 47.5% fee on all virtual asset sales on its virtual reality platform Horizon Worlds. A Meta spokesperson revealed this news to CNBC earlier today.
According to the spokesperson, the fee will comprise a hardware platform fee of 30% for sales made through the Meta Quest Store, Meta’s platform for selling apps and games for its VR headsets. Horizon World will take the remaining 17.5%.
This news comes after the company announced that it had started testing new tools that would let creators experiment with different ways to monetize the content they are building on its VR platform. While this news was exciting for creators on the platform, Meta did not mention it would levy such a colossal fee.
According to the April 11 announcement, Meta only availed these tools to select creators to get their feedback. Meta added that the tools are part of the steps it is taking toward creating its metaverse, which would let creators eke out a living from selling their digital goods, services, and experiences.
Meta comes under fire for the high transaction fees
Following this disclosure, Meta met a lot of criticism on Twitter, with one user saying,
If Meta wants 47.5% of NFT sales they gotta talk to the IRS because I don’t even have that after taxes 😭
However, Horizon World’s Vice President, Vivek Sharma, claims the fee is fair. Speaking to The Verge, Sharma claimed Horizon Worlds believes the fee is competitive and that the project team believes in other platforms being able to have their share.
Although Sharma argues the fee is not too steep, it is worth noting that OpenSea, the leading non-fungible token (NFT) marketplace, only charges a 2.5% transaction fee.
Apple’s 30% fee is unacceptable, but Horizon Worlds’ 47.5% fee is okay?
Before Meta announced how much it would charge creators on Horizon Worlds, its CEO Mark Zuckerberg called out Apple for the 30% fee it charges developers for in-app purchases on its App Store.
In November last year, Zuckerberg said,
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.
