BEIJING, April 14 (TMTPOST) — Facebook and Instagram’s parent company Meta is planning to charge metaverse creators on its virtual reality social platform Horizon Worlds up to 47.5% of their sales as fees.

This means that Meta creators would take a nearly 50% cut on virtual asset sales on Horizon Worlds.

Meta’s spokesperson has confirmed the news report, clarifying that the 30% fee is the Meta Quest Store hardware platform fee while the 17.5% fee is Horizon Worlds’ platform fee. The Meta Quest Store sells applications and games for its virtual reality headsets.

"If a creator sells an item for US$1.00, then the Meta Quest Store fee would be US$0.30 and the Horizon Platform fee would be US$0.17 (25% of the remainder), leaving US$0.53 for the Creator before any applicable taxes," the spokesperson said.

The company said on Monday that it would start testing a series of tools for creators on its platform to sell digital assets and make money on Horizon Worlds. Meta said this is a key part of the company’s plan to create a metaverse.

The high sales fees have drawn heavy criticism from the creators. It is worth noting that Meta’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg has been a critic of Apple’s 30% commission fee for the app developers on its application marketplace the App Store.

"As we build for the metaverse, we are focused on unlocking opportunities for creators to make money from their work. The 30% fees that Apple takes on transactions make it harder to do that, so we"re updating our subscriptions product so now creators can earn more," Zuckerberg said in November last year, criticizing Apple for its fees and claiming that Meta was making changes to help metaverse creators to evade Apple’s App Store fees.

The company said on Monday that creators will be able to sell virtual assets such as fashion accessories for users’ avatars and exclusive access to parts of their customized virtual worlds on Horizon Worlds. The move aims to foster virtual sales on Horizon Worlds.