ByteDance offering pay to Meta VR developers

TikTok parent ByteDance is offering to pay developers who have made virtual-reality software for Meta to bring their apps to its own fast-growing Pico headsets.

This is just one clear sign of the increased competition between the two companies in the VR space, one that Mark Zuckerberg claims will become the next major computing platform. ByteDance has offered some VR developers $15,000 to $25,000 per title, the people said according to the Wall Street Journal.

Why ByteDance is paying for Meta's VR developers

This comes as no surprise to Rolf Illenberger, Managing Director of VRdirect, who has developed VR software for enterprise users that's both easy to use and available on multiple devices, including Meta's Oculus and ByteDance's Pico. Illenberger and VRdirect have had a business relationship with Pico since 2021.

Pico's play in this space was clearly enterprise and B2B first, focusing on a different type of experience than that of Zuckerberg's Meta. Much of why VRdirect believes this push for developers exists is that Meta is peeling back to appease shareholders, despite holding market share on the device market. But Pico / ByteDance also sees a gigantic marketplace opportunity, as does Apple, which plans to release a device at some point in 2023.

VRdirect has helped bring some of the biggest companies on the planet, like Porsche, Nestle, and Siemens into VR and the metaverse, and advised several others in the process. So Illenberger knows what's driven companies into VR and how they've found success by using the medium.

VRdirect has been utilized in marketing, sales for events, and even human resources, onboarding, and recruiting. It has showcased corporate headquarters, helped introduce new products, allowed many to jump into the future without needing advanced technological skills, and done so with the flexibility to work on almost any device.