Meta, formerly known as Facebook, is praised for pioneering the Metaverse. But their latest move casts doubts their virtual world is going to be a nice place. Meta has announced it will be charging 47.5% for NFT sales in the Metaverse.
The existing platform Horizon Worlds is a working prototype of the Metaverse Mark Zuckerberg introduced last summer.
And while many other companies announced their own versions of the metaverse, and some have even launched them, Meta is still considered to be the main driving force of the whole concept.
Not because it was Zuckerberg who started the hype. But because Facebook is such a massive social network.
No matter how cool other metaverses are, Meta will always have the advantage of the Facebook’s enormous user base. Even if just a half of existing Facebook users will eventually migrate to the virtual world, it would be well ahead of the competitors. At least at first.
But having such an edge might have played a cruel joke on Meta.
The Metaverse is still on a very early stage of development, but Meta is already shown signs of amazing greed. Those Zuck bucks of the Metaverse were already scandalous. Here comes another scandal.
Meta will cut 47,5% off NFT sales in the Metaverse
Meta announced yesterday that it would let a handful of Horizon Worlds creators sell virtual assets within the worlds they build, which could eventually include NFTs.
This is a good news. But it comes with a price.
Meta will take a cut of up to 47.5% on the sale of digital assets on Horizon Worlds. Yes, it is almost half of the price on each transaction.
According to a Meta spokesperson, that includes a “hardware platform fee” of 30% for sales made through the Meta Quest Store. It is a place where Meta sells apps and games for its virtual reality headsets.
But on top of that, Horizon Worlds will charge a 17.5% fee for each transaction.
Horizon Worlds (formerly Facebook Horizon) is a free virtual reality that allows people to build and explore virtual worlds. It is available Oculus VR headsets in the U.S. and Canada but it’s yet to be rolled out worldwide.
NFT community is angry and for a reason
Or even for two reasons.
First reason is the actual numbers.
47.5% sounds like crazy. Especially if you take a look at other places where users can trade NFTs.
For example, NFT marketplace OpenSea takes a 2.5% cut of each transaction, while rival LooksRare charges just 2%.
Even plain 17.5% fee would look rather defiant. But 47,5% is an absolute nonsense.
Many users rioted on Twitter, saying that after taxes, selling NFTs would be unprofitable.
The other reason is that Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has previously criticized Apple for charging developers a 30% fee for in-app purchases via the App Store.In 2021 Zuckerberg said his company was going to try to help metaverse creators avoid Apple’s App Store fee.
As we can see now, Meta’s fees for the sale of virtual assets on Horizon Worlds are significantly more than Apple charges developers on its App Store.
Source: CNBC
