It appears that Meta Platforms (NASDAQ: FB) is looking to make up for recently lost revenue due to Apple’s (NASDAQ: AAPL) privacy changes. Those lost revenues are evidently looking to be made up from consumers purchasing NFT’s, or non-fungible tokens, within their metaverse.
It’s being reported this morning that Meta is looking to take an outrageous 47.5% cut of the sale of digital assets within its metaverse, known as Horizon Worlds. The current pricing scheme as a result will leave developers with roughly half of the overall proceeds from the sale, and likely discourage further development by creators.
The outrageous fee is essentially cut into two separate buckets. The first is a 30% hardware platform fee ascribed to the Meta Quest Store, an app sales platform for Oculus Quest devices, which will see the company take a platform fee that is akin to Apple’s app store. The second is then a fee from Horizon Worlds itself, another Meta product, which will sit at 17.5% of the final amount – thereby resulting in nearly half of all sales going to the Facebook parent.
Horizon Worlds is Meta’s growing metaverse, which is accessed via the Oculus Quest, a virtual reality headset. meta originally acquired Oculus in 2014 in a $1.6 billion cash and stock deal.
Meta is currently in the process of introducing creator NFT’s to the platform, with a handful reportedly being able to sell items in the virtual world currently. In commenting on the outrageous fees, VP of Horizon Vivek Sharma referred to the cut being a “pretty competitive rate in the market.”
This is despite the fact that other NFT marketplaces, such as OpenSea, take anywhere from 2.5% to 7.5% of the total transaction in fees. It’s not immediately clear what in particular makes this pricing model a “competitive rate” within the current market.
The outrageous fee structure designed by Meta follows the development over the course of the last year between Apple and the company. With recent privacy changes made by Apple, Meta recently indicated that the loss of certain tracking features will cost the company upwards of $10.0 billion in revenue this year alone.
Information for this briefing was found via CNBC. The author has no securities or affiliations related to this organization. Not a recommendation to buy or sell. Always do additional research and consult a professional before purchasing a security. The author holds no licenses.
