Horizon Worlds Becomes Meta's First Try at Monetization

Meta's Horizon Worlds VR app tries its monetization feature in the metaverse for the first time.

In a recent announcement, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg stated that the company is testing monetization for the Horizon Worlds virtual reality spaces in order for creators to begin making money.

For the time being, Meta has enabled the new monetization tool for a small number of hand-picked creators. The company will be testing two new tools. These tools will allow creators to experiment with different ways to monetize what they are creating in Horizon Worlds.

The development of these tools is part of Meta's plans to build the metaverse, a universe of virtual worlds that are all interconnected.

Horizon World Monetization

Meta's new tools will be launched with a limited number of creators; this is to ensure that the company will be able to provide useful feedback, which will be critical in building a Metaverse that would benefit a large number of creators on the platform.

According to Meta CEO, Mark Zuckerburg: "It requires a lot of experimentation and creativity from the people who are building the worlds and building these experiences and all kinds of different things. But this will be a really iterative process in terms of building this. It's not like we just put something out there, and we're done. You know, we'll see what you all build. And then we'll see what resonates with the people using the worlds, and then we'll build the next round of tools based on that and keep on improving it. And so that's what I'm interested in, is just how quickly we can learn and iterate on this and keep on making it better."

Fans of creators can now purchase digital goods, services, and experiences. The creation of these tools would also enable Meta's vision of a long-term vision for the metaverse in which creators could earn a living.

However, in the meantime, these in-game items will only be available in the specific world where they purchased them. Users will not be able to access and transport it to another world, at least not for the time being.

According to CNET, Meta's VP of Horizon, Vivek Sharma, stated that, "What the creators can do as part of building their world, they can attach behaviors that trigger monetization, which means that we actually don't know all the things they can do to monetize."

Sharma also added that in Meta, they want to do it in a way that will allow them to scale it in the future to cross worlds, into shared spaces, and elsewhere.

In addition to the in-world items, Meta is introducing a monthly performance bonus for creators, which will vary from month to month and is intended to encourage participation in virtual reality. The bonuses are meant to follow a strategy similar to what Instagram already does, but with a different set of metrics to make them stand out.

According to Meaghan Fitzgerald, product marketing manager at Horizon Worlds, "We may look at metrics as we learn more about the general ecosystem that we want to reward on, but right now it's really just about those more general engagement metrics."

What Is Horizon World in the Metaverse?

Horizon Worlds is a virtual reality metaverse application. It is a familiar mix of existing VR social apps such as Rec Room, AltSpace VR, and VRChat.

While Meta's existing Facebook application appears to be largely unchanged, the company is looking to develop new social apps that bridge the gap between virtual reality, augmented reality, computers, and smartphones. Horizon Worlds is a free VR-centric experience that, for the time being, requires the use of a Quest 2 headset.