Meta Plans To Take Nearly 50% of Creator's Earnings In 'Horizon Worlds' (roadtovr.com) 79
After announcing earlier this week that creators can sell digital items in Horizon Worlds for real money, Meta has offered details about how many fees creators will have to pay on earnings made through the platform. According to Road to VR, "Meta explained that anything sold in Horizon Worlds would be subject to the same 30% fee the company charges developers selling apps through its VR platform and then an additional 25% fee on top of the remaining amount." From the report: The company provided the following example: "...if a creator sells an item for $1.00, then the Meta Quest Store fee would be $0.30 and the Horizon Platform fee would be $0.17, leaving $0.53 for the Creator before any applicable taxes." That's an effective rate of 47.5% of anything sold on Horizon Worlds to Meta, leaving 52.5% to the creator.
That's a pretty hefty take, but not entirely out of line with contemporaries. Roblox, for instance, takes between 30% and 70% of the revenue generated by creators depending upon whether the creator sold the item directly to customers or if the item was sold on the Roblox marketplace or by another party. These are big fees, no doubt, but creators are getting something in return. Horizon Worlds, for instance, offers up its self-contained collaborative building tools, access to an audience, and handles all hosting and networking costs associated with the things creators build. Whether that's worth 47.5% of what someone manages to sell on the platform is going to be up to the creator.
That's a pretty hefty take, but not entirely out of line with contemporaries. Roblox, for instance, takes between 30% and 70% of the revenue generated by creators depending upon whether the creator sold the item directly to customers or if the item was sold on the Roblox marketplace or by another party. These are big fees, no doubt, but creators are getting something in return. Horizon Worlds, for instance, offers up its self-contained collaborative building tools, access to an audience, and handles all hosting and networking costs associated with the things creators build. Whether that's worth 47.5% of what someone manages to sell on the platform is going to be up to the creator.
Well that zucks (Score:5, Funny)
Well, one gotta pay for the cost of all that data harvesting infrastructure... ... oh wait
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I don't know why anyone would use anything from Facebook at this rate. It's basically an access trap.
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It's amateur hour compared to Roblox. Those guys have illegal child labour and worse, and somehow seem to have avoided prosecution.
Roblox set a new standard for exploitation and Meta wants to replicate their "success".
Bezos responds (Score:3)
Amazon plans to take 150% of creators earnings and launch a competitor service. Take that Meta. A mere 50%! You got nothing in bezos
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I’m so keeping my fingers crossed that meta falls flat on its face. This whole thing sounds like a nerd fantasy and most users will not be interested
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heating up the planet for a fake planet to sell fake goods is expensive.
Echos of Second Life? (Score:2, Interesting)
I wonder how long these metaverse items will be able to fare. Second Life is still going, but it is not really used. In fact, other than maybe someone's kids, who bothers with these things?
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Someone sold Facebook on the concept that branding can create demand.
Re:Echos of Second Life? (Score:5, Interesting)
I've long been convinced SL was fudging its numbers. Back a decade or whatever ago when I was still "extremely online" as the kids put it, I'd see all these claims about "2 million concurrent users", and literally nobody I knew , most of whom where also "extremely online", used it with most not even having heard of it. I'd log in out of curiosity, and the place would be desolate empty. Something was *very* off about their claims.
I suspect the reality was maybe 100K people ever having used it , and maybe 2-3K online at a time, all in tiny pockets of the place leaving the vast majority of it effectively deserted.
The reality was it was boring and weird. There was no real "game" to it and the advertising was all "you can work and make money here", and to me that sounded like a job and in my spare time I do not want to have another job.
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I don't think they're inflating their numbers, I think everyone you know who's on it is a closeted furry.
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I've never encountered a closeted furry. Most were blatant and in-your-face, the rest were players of MUCKs.
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I've never encountered a closeted furry.
How on earth would you know?
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That's like asking if anyone knew Rob Halford was gay before he came out.
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I didn't find it weird. Bug-ridden and unusable, sure, but not weird. Plenty of MUSHes had no "game", per-se, and I'd used AlphaWorlds long enough to be used to the idea. Only, AlphaWorlds (for all that the 3D effect was really bad) was actually better because it didn't pretend it was better than it was. It was honest about the defects, a quality not present in most of these VR landscapes.
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SL probably pulls the same lie all marketing uses. "20 million accounts" (of which 95% only ever logged into the site once, and never again)
That said, it was popular with various non-straight people. GLBT roleplay, Furries, and people who like to write novels that would get them arrested in real life.
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it was popular with various non-straight people. GLBT roleplay, Furries, and people who like to write novels that would get them arrested in real life.
So, you're essentially saying it was popular in countries that are pretty low on the human freedom index. The USA has its problems, but I've never felt the need to be gay in virtual reality out of fear for how it would affect my first life.
Also, like they said in Ready Player One, real life is the only place you can have a decent meal. And I'll add, it's also the only place you can have decent sex - straight or gay.
Re:Echos of Second Life? (Score:4, Informative)
I've long been convinced SL was fudging its numbers.
I think so, too. But not on the orders of magniture that you suggest.
The reality was it was boring and weird. There was no real "game" to it and the advertising was all "you can work and make money here", and to me that sounded like a job and in my spare time I do not want to have another job.
Second Life is very explicitly not a game. However, lots of people showed up asking what the game was, how to play, etc. etc. They were very disappointed to learn that it was a 3D interactive chat environment, not a game.
It was designed for exactly three kinds of customers. 1) Content Creators 2) Some of whom wanted to make money at it, as opposed to just having a playground and 3) Consumers of said content.
Content included: 3D environment stuff (avatars, clothes, shoes, sex toys, houses, parks, starships); Interavtive experiences such asforeign language classes, GIMP tutorials, educational materials, social meetings (such as writer's groups, cancer survivors groups), and music. Lots of live music shows.
There were also a few MMORPG games people had developed within the system, ranging from typical shootem up battles, to vampire club bitings, bowling, and Empire-type scoring games.)
Originally, there was also a lot of illegal online gambling (3D casinos). And the virtual sex aspect was huge, as with any Internet technology.
A very few users "gamed" the system to become "labd barons", until the company pulled the rug out from under them.
Yes, a few people did make millions of dollars in Second Life. Many, many content creators made less (some 100K$US, most in the 5K$US annual profits). The ability to freely convert in-game currency to $US enabled that. Yes, they all had to work hard at it.
People who showed up wanting to play a video game, or to Get Rich Quick For Doing Nothing, didn't find what they were looking for.
Second Life is still around, but they lost a lot of content creators due to the Copyright problem. It turned out to be trivial to clone/steal any 3D content. It is harder than ever to estimate the real number of users. I wouldn't be surprises if these days they only had some tens of thousands concurrent users. I think at the peak (20 years ago) it was aroud 60,000 concurrent. With a bazillion accounts signed up, many of whom lasted about 30 miuntes before quitting.
Cuz, you know. Not a game.
Right now all the "metaverse" companies seem to be struggling to learn things that have been understood from Second Life for more than 20 years.
Second Life did not have ads. User accounts were free, and you could create whatever you wanted and sell it for free (no fees). Owning persistent virtual land (say, an in-world storefront) cost you rental. The economy was based on users paying each other, and on the company renting virtual land to people who needed that. Basically, the business was a VR hosting service. Not uncommon for certain kinds of users to rent multiple whole servers of virtual land.
Makes Apple and Google look reasonable (Score:5, Insightful)
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I admit, I'm still not sure about the "metaverse", but I am pretty sure that if there's going to be a metaverse, I'd rather Facebook not own it. So anything they do to drive people to their competitors is fine with me.
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IIRC, the first real attempt at a metaverse was UnterMUD, which was a text-based MUD environment that could link to other UnterMUD servers such that players could traverse between the servers transparently. I could be incorrect, Alpha Worlds may have been first. But these two constitute the original VR metaverse. Both, for all their limitations, were more flexible, more powerful, metaverses than anything done since.
I would contend that learning from these original versions, applying modern technology and mo
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We don't call collaborative text adventures VR, though you could call them MMOs. They aren't immersive to any degree. Battletech is VR, BtechMUSE was not.
MU*s are not more flexible or powerful than Second Life, which can do everything they can do (you could write one inside of it) plus does it in a 3d world. It literally adds an entire dimension to what they were. Not that it's a great effort, from what I can tell, and I absolutely abhor the fact that they created their own C-like scripting language instead
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if there's going to be a metaverse
FB's metaverse has already existed for years. It is a 3d business-oriented group chat with no pants. (or legs)
They have these dreams of expanding the content, but as you can tell from this story, it is guaranteed to flop.
No company is trying to build the thing from Snow Crash. And it isn't really want users want, either. In the book, it was only a thing because the real world had devolved into a fragmented dystopia where people living in different parts of the same city couldn't even easily visit many of th
Welcome to retail (Score:2)
It sucks, perhaps, but that's about the same markup as most retailers. Other than groceries.
Half the trick for any business selling anything is *selling* it. Making a lot of this stuff isn't that hard. The hard part of making any money is getting people to buy it.
Ever had an great idea for a product, then a couple years later you see someone else earning a bunch of money doing your idea? Most of us have had that experience. Why? Because ideas are a some a dozen. The difference is sales. Getting it in fron
charge more! (Score:5, Interesting)
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The only alternative would be to develop an alternate metaverse, which would instantly generate a new monopoly. That's the main problem with these things, they're intrisically monopolistic, unless the developers of the application would actually consider creating an API so that third parties can implement their own stores and payment processing systems on them.
Which, by the way, is technically possible.
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The only alternative would be to develop an alternate metaverse, which would instantly generate a new monopoly. That's the main problem with these things, they're intrisically monopolistic, unless the developers of the application would actually consider creating an API so that third parties can implement their own stores and payment processing systems on them.
Which, by the way, is technically possible.
How is this different from game consoles and their exclusive games and content? Netflix, Disney, Spotify and their exclusivity contracts? Is that monopoly too? Nobody holds a gun to your head, you can always make the informed decision not to consume any of those services and the same goes for Meta which is what I plan to do. Meta will learn soon enough that they can't squeeze much water out of a stone.
Re: charge more! (Score:2)
The difference is that all the meta-retards ("metards") are selling their platforms as a place where content creators can shill their worthless digital goods. If your goods don't transfer between the different metard worlds, then they undermine the entire selling point of their platform.
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The difference is that all the meta-retards ("metards") are selling their platforms as a place where content creators can shill their worthless digital goods. If your goods don't transfer between the different metard worlds, then they undermine the entire selling point of their platform.
Computer games are useless digital goods to me because I have better things to do with my life. I don't buy much music and when I do I try to use the medium that most benefits the artist (hint: not Spotify) and I don't watch much TV either. Your mileage may vary on all counts. Similarly, just because you think virtual/augmented reality is digital garbage that does not mean other people agree with you and as long ans there is a demand for what Meta has to offer you are basically wrong about their stuff being
Re: charge more! (Score:2)
There's absolutely no sustainable market for the metaverse.
I find it it telling that while I was talking about the metaverse, you conflated it with VR/AR. That's because there is in fact nothing new about the metaverse. It's decades old tech that no one wants.
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The only alternative would be to develop an alternate metaverse
With blackjack! And hookers!
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There's another alternative (Score:2)
Every time I see the word "metaverse" I roll my eyes and think "how dumb do they think I am?". Then I remember how many folks out there have some form of depression or mental illness that can be exploited for profit and think "fuck these guys" after throwing up a little in m
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The only alternative would be to develop an alternate metaverse, which would instantly generate a new monopoly. That's the main problem with these things, they're intrisically monopolistic, unless the developers of the application would actually consider creating an API so that third parties can implement their own stores and payment processing systems on them.
Which, by the way, is technically possible.
The client software for Second Life was open sourced, and forked a number of times. Most users preferred one of the third-party developed clients, rather than the official version from Linden Lab.
Also very early on, the server ("Simulator") side was reverse engineered. The resulting OpenSim server software was used by many people to imlpement their own VR grids.
it was turnkey easy: anyone with a PC could just download the package, click a few buttons and voila you're hosting a Second Life compatible virtual
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If we want a proper metaverse then we'll have to create it in FOSSland, with standards and stuff. Nobody seems to have yet done that.
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There were some projects in the mid 2000s... One called Solipsis. P2P decentralized open-source metaverse thing. I posted a link on another comment here. Now that many people have fiber, this would definitely be worth investigating again as an alternative to this monstrosity.
Lol snowcrashed (Score:3)
Ha Ha Ha ha!!! Well that ended really quickly! :) Guessing this was a trial to see if people would freak out or not. Epic's next target.. Personally I do not see a way for the "metaverse" to take off unless it is an open protocol that does not require Meta to be involved at all, and Meta's only chance to become a major player if there can even be such a thing would certainly be minimized if they demand a 50% cut. I'm not going to give them ideas about how to become a "player" by posting here since I guess they read /. Presumably they will then try to buy any content studios based on discounting internally developed content or some such crud. Meta stock shorted in 3...2..1..
VRChat (Score:1)
Open source "meta" killer? (Score:3)
Does anyone really want this kind of "meta" world badly enough to start an open source project to deliver it?
I don't know, seems ... like a generally duff idea all round.
But yeah, a _true_ "metaverse" would be anarchic, like the early internet, free for anyone to join, create, expand.
You have to laugh at the idea of paying money for "virtual items like jewelry or a special basketball"
A special basketball? WTF?
Seriously, enthusiasts have been creating free stuff for games which allow mods, for decades - some of exceptionally high quality.
Just for the fun, for the learning, for the sharing.
I seriously hope that "Meta" falls on it's ass, because all that is going to happen, is a frikkin' grind fest, where people are employed to churn out "virtual items like jewelry or a special basketball" for pennies, in the same way that game grinding happens now, with poor people working stupid hours for unscrupulous shit bags.
You can see it now though, some celebrity endorsed bullshit "golden virtual ticket" for sale, where you can "hang out" in the celebs "Virtual palace" or whatever.
There's no reason for this move by Facebook, sorry "Meta", other than an attempt at a big virtual cash grab - it's all based entirely around greed and the type of douchebag that is willing to spend real money for "a special basketball" - probably in the hope they can sell it on for more profit.
Die Meta, Die.
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(Don't be cheeky and say 'AWS'! They're still decentralized, somewhat...)
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There was an open-source, P2P multiverse project developed by researchers back in 2008 - named Solipsis.
It went under because it was a PhD project and wasn't followed by a real-world implementation, but it was working and the ideas developed were super interesting.
Pity the source code is gone now.
Source (fr) [inria.fr]
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Nothing is really new -- there have been multiple open-source-ish things and other non-open competition. A couple of years ago High Fidelity (a "second life in VR and open" project) was basically doing exactly what facebook is trying to do, but open. But they gave up. The project leader (who was getting the venture capital) basically said it is just not physiologically realistic for most people to spend many hours in VR with current hardware. I think the current closest truly open multiverse-like platfo
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where you can "hang out" in the celebs "Virtual palace" or whatever.
Well that could actually be cool, though. A smart idea, even. If I had a chance to hang out with Will Smith, I would rather do it virtually.
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I just don't see where this will make money. Other than a lot of console gamers who will fall over themselves to pay scalper prices, pay for subscriptions, DLC, skins, NFTs, not many people have the cash to afford the nickle and diming the Metaverse would offer.
I can see some celeb offering a virtual concert... but for something that essentially is a movie video, but charging hundreds, perhaps thousands of dollars, it may sell to a few people, but most people might just not bother... or find someone who re
Of the remaining $0.53... (Score:2)
Re: Of the remaining $0.53... (Score:2)
How do you figure? The IRS will want whatever cut FB is already paying on its profits. That's not going to be close to 50%. And that's assuming they have 0 costs to deduct.
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Re: Of the remaining $0.53... (Score:2)
Well, the U.S. government was the primary contributor to the invention the Internet. They really deserve a cut of all ecommerce worldwide.
Fraud (Score:2)
This reminds me of government "allowing" lotteries, then keeping half off the top, then taxing the remaining winnings, which is in the top tax bracker.
It's fraud, and many a politician would try to ride to power lambasting a corporation that did that.
Re: Fraud (Score:2)
It's not fraud. It's in the T&C.
Not even remotely reasonable (Score:2)
I can find no reasonable justification for this exploitative fee structure other than sheer greed. Why they think their cherry picked "contemporaries" even matters is beyond me. The Facebook marketplace does not charge anything remotely like a 47.5% fee on actual real things which cannot be duplicated endlessly for small fractions of a cent.
"access to an audience" = paid in exposure (Score:2)
Not entiely unreasonable (Score:5, Insightful)
What you're selling as a "creator" are basically 3D meshes with maybe a bit of logic. There are websites where you can sell these and get a better split, but you're unlikely to make much money that way. Because the value to the users in not in those models alone. The value to the users is in being able to use these items in a shared virtual environment. Meta is providing the necessary software stack, it's providing the servers, paying for traffic and selling the required VR hardware at cost.
They're are doing much more than your typical app store or game store, so a larger share of the profits is not unreasonable. A better comparison for Horizon would be Roblox, which takes an effective 80% from "creator" sales.
Just more corporate rent-seeking. (Score:2)
So this is just rent-seeking in the virtual world.
But the difference is that instead of charging a flat fee, they're taking a percentage of revenue. Which means that the harder the creators work, the more money Meta makes. Instead of amortizing the cost of the SW stack (plus markup) across the expected pool of creators, they instead charge a percentage of revenue. If they overestimate the number of creators, or the created value, both Meta and the creators lose everything. If they underestimate the n
Sold my Soul To the Company Store (Score:3)
Sounds about right... (Score:2)
Surprised Guerilla Games (Score:2)
Accurate life simulation. (Score:1)
Re:Accurate life simulation. (Score:4, Insightful)
Spot the sovcit in 3...2...1...
No, taxation is not theft. it would be impossible to receive many of the services that people desire and need. Whether or not you might feel like you are not personally benefiting from any particular service that your taxes may go towards funding is irrelevant. All of society benefits, and by virtue of living where you do, you are a part of that society. If you do not wish to pay taxes, then it follows that you must remove yourself from any society that requires them. Society, however, does not owe you any particular path do achieving that end.
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Taxes make business possible. A lot of African countries have a 0% tax rate... but if your guys are not winning the battles against the local warlords, your business will get sacked and everyone enslaved or slaughtered. Taxes are why the trucks and trains can travel on a lonely stretch of track of interstate without worry that someone will have blocked the passage and will take the goods by force. Taxes also allow for a safety net. If a population is always on the verge of starvation or homelessness, th
I've tried Horizon Worlds (Score:2)
Not a huge surprise. (Score:5, Interesting)
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Obligatory (Score:2)
A fool (or lots of Meta-Fools) and their money are soon parted
Zuck Makes Apple Look Good! Again! (Score:1)
Makes the Apple Store look a hellava lot better!
Ha!Ha!Ha!
Way to excuse it (Score:2)
Apple's 30% cut (Score:2)
Fixed that for you... (Score:2)
"That's a pretty hefty take, but other people are ripping folks off too, so there's no problem."
Seriously, every time I see someone saying "but other companies do it!" I have the urge to tell back "that just makes them greedy, predatory assholes too. IT DOESN'T MAKE WHAT THEY'RE DOING "RIGHT". I'm not sure I understand that logic since I've been out of grade school for so long now...
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I'm not sure I get your rant. No one is forcing you to use meta or even apple or even a cellphone. Who cares what they charge. That's their prerogative. It's not like they sell life saving medicine, food, water or clothing. They want to sell digital stuff that no one needs.
So I don't really see how it's wrong to charge money for something that's purely optional.
If they are being SOOO greedy, then surely it will be very easy for someone else to come along and charge half as much and eat their lunch. So again
Lets not forget your tax! (Score:1)
How much if your visual field will they sell? (Score:2)
Before users puke from all the ads and have a seizure?
What Were You Expecting? (Score:1)
If you are co-dependent enough to enable their dystopian business model (ala The Matrix), don't come crying later when they squeeze you even harder.