Apple has responded to Meta‘s plan to take a near 50% cut of the action for digital asset purchases made inside the metaverse. Apple calls Meta’s decision to charge a nearly 50% commission “hypocritical” after the social network has long complained of fees charged in Apple’s App Store, which can go as high as 30%.
Yesterday, reports indicated that Meta, the parent company of Facebook, plans to grab 47.5% of all digital asset purchases made inside of the “metaverse.” The 47.5 number includes a 30% hardware fee as well as a 17.5% platform fee.
Apple spokesperson Fred Sainz told MarketWatch that Facebook is hypocritical and that while the social network complains about Apple’s own platform fees, it wants to charge creators an even higher fee.
“Meta has repeatedly taken aim at Apple for charging developers a 30% commission for in-app purchases in the App Store — and have used small businesses and creators as a scapegoat at every turn,” Apple spokesman Fred Sainz stated in an email to MarketWatch. “Now — Meta seeks to charge those same creators significantly more than any other platform. [Meta’s] announcement lays bare Meta’s hypocrisy. It goes to show that while they seek to use Apple’s platform for free, they happily take from the creators and small businesses that use their own.”
Facebook and the company’s CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, have repeatedly criticized how Apple’s App Store wets its beak with a 15% to 30% cut of the action for in-app purchases as anti-competitive and monopolistic.
Zuckerberg said the App Store “deserves scrutiny,” as Apple has “unilateral control of what gets on the phones in terms of apps.”
