Bloomberg: US competition watchdog looking into subsidiary Meta

The US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and several US states are investigating the Oculus system. The company that makes virtual reality glasses, like Facebook a subsidiary of Meta, is said to be guilty of unfair competition practices. That Bloomberg financial news agency reports based on insiders.

US competition watchdog employees have spoken to developers making apps for Oculus in recent months. The company’s VR headset app store may prefer software developed by Oculus itself. Also, some developers accuse the company of copying promising ideas and making it difficult for some third-party apps to work properly on the platform.

The FTC also wanted to know more about Oculus’ sales strategy. The company’s headphones are much cheaper than competitors such as the Taiwanese HTC.

An FTC investigation could thwart Meta’s plans with the so-called metaverse. CEO Mark Zuckerberg wants to turn his social media company into a digital meeting place where conversations, games and shopping, for example, come alive thanks to virtual reality headsets. Adults in the US and Canada can already use the Meta Horizon Worlds platform to play games in virtual reality.

The parent company of Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Oculus changed its name to Meta this fall to emphasize its belief in metaverses. The Internet group previously announced that it will have to significantly increase investment to create a digital world that is indistinguishable from the real world. Meta, and then Facebook, bought Oculus in 2014 for $2 billion (€1.8 billion).