Should anyone be surprised by this title? The first Big Tech company to publicly announce its intentions to build out the metaverse and even change its name from Facebook to Meta has already lost the battle. To some, this may make sense I mean it is a Big Tech company after all and they tend to take some great ideas and figure out how to screw them up. Others though might be a little confused as Meta continues to roll out updates on their product and the features it will have. Yesterday though a huge issue was brought to life that will effectively end the endeavor before it even began.
Meta wants a monumental cut of the sales in its Metaverse. Not even a large cut no they want a cut that makes even Apple blush. Remember how everyone thought Apple's app store cut of 30% was crazy... well Meta took note and then decided we can do even better.
The cut Meta wants... 47.5% of the sale of each and every digital asset! Meta was kind enough though to charge two fees to reach that level. The first is a 30% for sale made through the Meta Quest store and is labeled as a "hardware platform fee" the second honestly is the kicker. Horizon Worlds, created and owned by Meta itself, charges users a 17.5% fee! While either of the fees alone would have been enough to outrage the NFT community, the very community that they need to tap into, they decided hey we can do even better.
Now, why do I say this ends this Metaverse before it begins? Well, the first reason is it is still in Beta testing that was invite-only. They also only just started allowing people to sell NFTs on it and when they did this they did not publish how much they would cost. Users had to find this out by either buying or selling something. The other reason I am saying that this is ending their Metaverse is that who is going to want to work on developing products if Meta is going to take half of what you sell it for off the top. It is absurd to think that the top coders, builders, artists, etc. will want to come to your platform if this is the case. The cost of doing business would be so high it would effectively shelve the idea entirely!
OpenSea, the long-established NFT marketplace king, has previously been hit for its high fees and its fees are only 2.5%! A close rival of it LooksRare charges just 2%. Since these two projects are not embedded or built on any blockchain I can think of it does add some extra cost to possibly have to send an NFT around to get it where you want it. However, even on a bad day when gas fees are high, it is still not possible to justify the rates that Meta has laid out. Especially if one of these marketplaces gets added as a feature to a Metaverse so you walk into an OpenSea store like you would a real-life store the transaction fees are gone resulting in just a 2.5% fee!
With so many options similar to what Meta is planning ( I think Roblox is very very similar and would be close to what Meta is trying to do) and those options having a much much lower transactional fee associated with them Meta is in trouble. Typically at the beginning, the rates would be cheaper as well and then be hiked later on once people are on the platform or in Meta's Metaverse. They chose a different option though that has and will continue to result in additional bad press when that is something they can ill-afford.
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