Meta Plans to Take a Nearly 50% Commission on Purchases Made Inside the 'Metaverse' Despite Complaining About Apple's 30% App Store Cut

Meta, better known as Facebook, plans to take a nearly 50% commission on digital asset purchases made inside the "metaverse," the company has revealed, months after it had complained about the maximum 30% cut that Apple takes for purchases through the App Store.

This week, Meta announced new ways it's allowing creators to monetize and earn money from the "metaverse." One way it's enabling that is through letting creators sell NFTs, or non-fungible tokens, through its Horizon Worlds platform. In the post, Meta declined to specify how much of a cut it would take for those purchases, but a company spokesperson told CNBC it would be 47.5% commission, inclusive of a 30% hardware fee and a 17.5% platform charge:

A Meta spokesperson confirmed to CNBC Wednesday that Meta will take an overall cut of up to 47.5% on each transaction. That includes a “hardware platform fee” of 30% for sales made through the Meta Quest Store, where it sells apps and games for its virtual reality headsets. On top of that, Horizon Worlds, will charge a 17.5% fee.

Meta's vice president of Horizons, Vivek Sharma, told The Verge that the nearly 50% commission is "a pretty competitive rate in the market," adding "we believe in the other platforms being able to have their share."

Ironically, Meta itself, including company CEO Mark Zuckerberg, has been vocal about Apple's 15% to 30% cut from the ‌App Store‌. In June, Zuckerberg wrote on Facebook that Meta would be keeping paid online events, subscriptions, badges, and other products free for creators until 2023, and after that, Meta would announce a commission that is "less than the 30% that Apple and others take."

In another post a few months later taking aim at Apple's policy, Zuckerberg said that the ‌App Store‌ cut makes "opportunities for creators to make money from their work" harder. Facebook has a long history of calling Apple's ‌App Store‌ and its 15% to 30% commission "monopolistic" and harmful to customers, adding the platform "blocks innovation [and] blocks competition." Apple and Meta had a public dispute in 2020 where the Cupertino tech giant refused an update to the Facebook app that highlighted the 30% ‌App Store‌ fee.

Update: Apple has responded to the plan by saying it "lays bare Meta's hypocrisy." Apple added that as Meta takes aim at the ‌App Store‌ fees, the social media giant will "happily take from the creators and small businesses that use their own."