Meta wants almost half the profits from Horizon Worlds content creators

Meta (the company formerly just known as Facebook) will take an eye-watering cut on sales of content through their Horizon Worlds digital platform. They will scalp 25% of any sales made through Horizon Worlds, which is applied after any platform specific fees. For Meta’s own Quest Store, that’s set at 30%, meaning that any creators will be left with just 51.25% of whatever is sold.

Horizon Worlds is Meta’s first effort at a social metaverse platform, initially released for Quest VR headsets, but expected to spread to phones and potentially other platforms soon. It’s also Meta’s first shot at creating a creator-led digital space, similar to Roblox and Rec Room, both of which allow creators to profit from their works. Considering that the cut that Roblox takes from creations that are very often made by children, Meta’s seemingly chosen to make an even less likeable business model.

Initially a small selection of Horizon creators will be able to sell virtual items and effects in the worlds they create, such as digital jewellery, with participants in the US able to earn from a $10 million creator fund.

Vivek Sharma, Meta’s VP of Horizon, told The Verge that “We think it’s a pretty competitive rate in the market,” and that “We believe in the other platforms being able to have their share.”

That’s obviously in reference to Horizon Worlds coming to platforms like iOS, PlayStation and Xbox in future, each of which has a 30% fee. However, it’s flying in the face of Meta’s own arguments surrounding the Epic vs. Apple court case, in which they criticised the 30% rate as harming small businesses through the Facebook platform.

Meta obviously wants this to be a way to make money from their overarching goal of creating the metaverse – which remains as ridiculous as it sounds – though they’re also exploring ways to integrate advertising as another source of revenue. The main problem is that taking almost half of the profits when going through their own platform feels even more exploitative than the standard 30% cut. It’s a business decision that feels blind to the greater context of digital marketplaces and also unaware of how some companies are taking different approaches.

Epic Games has gained a certain notoriety for the way that they have brute forced their way to having a digital storefront on PC, but at the very least they know how to make it more attractive to developers, reducing the percentage of a transaction that they take through the store, and also waiving the fees for developers using Unreal Engine that sell on their store.

Source: The Verge 

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• Source: https://www.thesixthaxis.com/2022/04/14/meta-wants-almost-half-the-profits-from-horizon-worlds-content-creators/