Despite a recent name change meant to put the scandals to rest, Meta is once again in the sights of US authorities. This time, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is interested in the tech giant’s virtual reality division, formerly known as Oculus.
Questionable practices in the Oculus app store
The federal agency as well as the state attorneys general of New York, Tennessee and North Carolina are currently investigating potential anti-competitive practices by Meta, which bought Oculus for 2 billion. in 2014. Investigators are particularly interested in the price of the Oculus Quest headset, which was set at $299, well below the amounts offered by the company’s direct competitors, such as HTC or Sony. .
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The media Bloomberg reports that to carry out their investigation, the members of the FTC speak with developers who are developing applications available on the Oculus application store. The investigators are wondering in particular whether this application store exercises discriminatory practices against third-party applications in order to highlight the products developed by Meta… and it would seem that the answer is affirmative.
A developer by the name of Guy Godin, who has a desktop application allowing streaming from a PC to a VR headset, has thus delivered a testimony undermining Meta. According to him, Zuckerberg’s firm ordered him to remove a feature that allows users to stream PC games to the Oculus Quest at the risk of removing his app from the store. Soon after, Meta released the Oculus Link cable, which offers a similar capability. Another developer dubbed Cix Liv explained that its fitness tracker app launched in 2019 was targeted by Meta through a software update preventing it from working in games.
Oculus Move, an application “allowing you to measure the number of calories you burn and the duration of your physical activity on all games or all applications in VR” was deployed shortly after.
At the end of 2021, Facebook became Meta to show its ambition in the metaverse. Illustration: Dima Solomin / Unsplash
The noose is tightening on Meta
Today, Oculus is the undisputed leader in virtual reality headsets. The company’s headsets accounted for 75% of global VR headset shipments in the first quarter of 2021, up from 34% a year earlier, according to industry firm Counterpoint Research. In addition, you should know that the firm’s application store works similarly to Google’s Play Store and Apple’s App Store: Meta pockets a 30% commission on purchases made there. This is an interesting fact, as Meta is a strong opponent of the 30% tax imposed by Apple…
This investigation by the FTC is not the first to target Oculus. At the end of 2020, the United States Department of Justice also launched investigations for similar facts against the VR branch of Meta; German authorities have also announced that they are investigating the firm for its controversial rules regarding Oculus accounts. In addition, the FTC recently revealed that it was launching an investigation into Meta’s takeover of the startup Within, the origin of the VR fitness application Supernatural.
Mark Zuckerberg’s company is, more generally, targeted by regulators around the world. At the end of 2020 in the United States, she was charged with abuse of a dominant position in relation to the takeovers of Instagram and WhatsApp. After many twists and turns, the legal action was able to resume its course last week following the decision of a federal judge. If the FTC wins its lawsuit, Meta may have to part ways with Instagram and WhatsApp.
Metaverse deployment affected?
To get there, however, the FTC has a long way to go and it is far from likely that it will achieve its goals. However, we must be wary of the federal agency and its new leader, Lena Khan having a very specific plan to regulate big tech: she wants to attack ” root causes and rethink certain business models that may allow web giants to break the law.
These run-ins with the law may complicate Meta’s deployment of the metaverse. Considered the future iteration of the Internet, this concept combining augmented and virtual reality is at the heart of the company’s ambitions for the future.