Facebook Is Getting Roasted On Twitter For Its Greedy 47 Percent Meta Tax On Virtual Sales
"Creator monetization is really important because you need to make a good living building these experiences people can have," said Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg from within a Horizon World. Meta is seemingly all-in on virtual workspaces being the "future of work." However, it also looks all-in on taking about half of what people sell their work for, at a whopping 47.5%. Which, of course, has NFT Twitter all aflutter.
The so-called metaverse is rapidly expanding and has no theoretical limit on space. So there are even "Metaversities," extensions of universities into the virtual space, such as South Dakota State University (in case you thought we were joking).
It is a cool idea, but it is nothing new. Definitely not as new of an idea as Meta likes to tout. For example, SecondLife has been building virtual experiences since 2003, though not in VR. It also allows in-game creators to sell their creations, admittedly many of them risque, which Meta does not allow in Horizon Worlds. SecondLife's creator cut is only 7.5% though, which makes SecondLife a more open, and viable platform for creators of interest. VRChat also allows creators to make things for themselves, but has no monetization platform. Even Epic Games is trying to throw its hat in the ring with Sony and Lego for a whopping $2 Billion, but it stated it would use the already established Epic Games Store platform, which only takes 15% on sales.
Footnotes:
— 6529 (@punk6529) April 12, 2022
1. 2.5% transaction fee on OpenSea
2. Meta's proposed pricing below pic.twitter.com/3sLniDMLFO
The major issue here, according to NFT Twitterverse, is that there are already people monetizing digital assets, and the platforms that facilitate those exchanges often take a comparatively minuscule amount. Such as OpenSea or RandGallery, both of which only take 2.5% transaction fees.That seems to be a relative standard across the Crypto NFT scene.
There is a small shining light that creators do get access to a bonus program as part of Meta's monetization of the metaverse, allowing them to set goals and when goals are met payouts will be fee-free, but that might also mean that creators may end up with no payout for extended periods.
