Apple accuses Meta of ‘hypocrisy’ for nearly 50% commission on metaverse sales

Apple accuses Meta of ‘hypocrisy’ for nearly 50% commission on metaverse sales

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Selling anything in Meta’s VR metaverse will cost developers quite a bit.
Photo: Meta

Facebook’s parent company Meta will claim almost half of the money third-party developers earn from sales in Horizon Worlds, the VR platform for Quest headsets. An Apple executive says that “lays bare Meta’s hypocrisy,” considering it has criticized Apple in the past for its 30% App Store fee.

Meta’s Horizon Worlds commissions raise Apple’s ire

Apple, Google and other companies take a share of the money third-party developers earn when users buy items in their respective software stores. This goes to pay for platform development and running the store itself. The amount of the fee is controversial. And Meta has criticized Apple’s 30% App Store commissions.

Then Meta announced it would let “a handful of creators“ charge for items in the Horizon Worlds virtual reality environment for Quest headsets. And it would take a significant chunk of the proceeds. There’s a 30% fee, and then an additional 25% fee on the remaining. That ends up being a 47.5% commission. “We think it’s a pretty competitive rate in the market,” Vivek Sharma, Meta’s VP of Horizon, told The Verge.

“Meta has repeatedly taken aim at Apple for charging developers a 30% commission for in-app purchases in the App Store — and have used small businesses and creators as a scapegoat at every turn,” an Apple spokesman told MarketWatch. “Now — Meta seeks to charge those same creators significantly more than any other platform. [Meta’s] announcement lays bare Meta’s hypocrisy. It goes to show that while they seek to use Apple’s platform for free, they happily take from the creators and small businesses that use their own.”

An Apple VR/AR headset is expected to make Apple and Meta into direct competitors within the next year. But  the iPhone-maker doesn’t plan to make its own metaverse.