Claimed To Break Competitors, Meta Virtual Reality Business Under Surveillance

Photo Minh Pham/Unsplash

JAKARTA - Although the company has changed its name, that has not stopped the government in the United States (US) from observing or monitoring its business practices. Right now, Oculus is in the center of attention.

Oculus is Meta's Virtual Reality (VR) hardware and software subsidiary. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) along with state governments such as New York, North Carolina, and Tennessee have spoken with VR developers about Meta's alleged antitrust violations.

The government suspects that Oculus has crippled third-party VR app developers and underestimated competing VR hardware. Like the very cheap Quest 2 headset pricing, at just $299 without any requirements for a very modern PC.

However, it is not known exactly how Oculus will suffer the consequences for its price, but it is worth pointing out that competitive pricing by itself is not an antitrust violation.

Citing Mashable on Sunday, January 16, according to the FTC website, it would be problematic if below-cost pricing allowed a dominant competitor to knock its rivals off the market and then raise prices to above-market levels for a long period of time.

On the subject of the app, the developer told Bloomberg, Meta has basically killed off third-party Oculus apps with interesting features and launched its own idea some time later.

Take the Yur app, for example, a company that makes an Oculus fitness tracker that originally worked in Oculus games, but became unusable due to the first-party Oculus Move functionality.

This investigation appears to be in its early stages. At this point, it's mostly important because it's the latest in a long list of government looks into how Meta operates.

So far, VR has received less attention than other Meta divisions. The FTC is currently pursuing an antitrust lawsuit against the company over its acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp, after a setback last year, a judge revived the lawsuit earlier this week.

But as Meta has begun to emphasize its role in the metaverse, the area could invite more legal scrutiny as well.

In just the past 12 months, Meta has faced investigations into racist recruiting practices and was the subject of a Senate trial for knowingly pushing misinformation on Facebook.