Meta will give out a total of $50 million dollars to creators of the most “fun and engaging” Horizon Worlds experiences.
These Meta Horizon Creator Fund payments will be “tied to worlds’ contributions to the overall ecosystem across time spent, retention, and in-world purchases, so there are a variety of different ways for creators to maximize their earnings”
Separately, Meta is launching a $1 million “mobile-focused” competition on March 11.
Back in 2021, Meta launched a somewhat similar $10 million creator fund when rebranding the platform from Facebook Horizon to Horizon Worlds. And in 2022 it launched a smaller $500,000 fund for “unique, innovative, and engaging worlds”.
The new Horizon Creator Fund dwarfs both previous efforts, and arrives amid significant concerns about Meta’s focus on Horizon Worlds over store apps.
David Heaney
The Horizon Creator Fund announcement comes as Meta just launched the Horizon Desktop Editor in early access, letting creators use their PC to import assets and write TypeScript to build “high-fidelity worlds” with “complex game logic”.
Meta is also enabling Horizon Worlds’ in-world monetization features, which let world creators charge for items and experiences, in 18 new countries from Monday: Australia, Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, and Taiwan, in addition to the currently supported US, UK, and Canada.
