How app store and storefront payouts actually work

A single game can earn across half a dozen storefronts at once, and not one of them pays you the same way. Each platform sets its own payout cadence, its own minimum payment threshold and, in some cases, its own fixed payout currency. The result is that your revenue arrives in fragmented, lagged chunks that rarely line up with your own month-end.

Understanding each storefront's mechanics is the first step to forecasting cash and reconciling what you are actually owed. This guide walks through how the mobile app stores and the leading PC game storefronts pay, then looks at what the fragmentation means for a studio managing several titles.

Mobile app stores: threshold-based payouts

Some mobile app stores hold your proceeds until your balance clears a minimum payment threshold, which for most regions and currencies sits at around 40 USD or the local equivalent. Until you cross that line, the money simply rolls forward to the next period rather than being paid out.

Once you are over the threshold, payment is made on a monthly cycle for the relevant fiscal period. For a small or newly launched title this means your first few months of earnings can sit undisbursed until they accumulate past the minimum, which is worth modelling into any launch cashflow plan.

Mobile app stores: fixed-date monthly cycles

Other mobile app stores run a cleaner monthly cycle on a fixed date. Payments are issued monthly, starting around the middle of the month, covering the previous calendar month's sales. So January's sales are settled from mid-February onward.

That predictability helps, but the currency you receive still depends on your payout configuration, and the one-month lag means revenue you booked in your accounts in January does not become spendable cash until mid-February at the earliest.

PC game storefronts

Some leading PC game storefronts pay exclusively in US Dollars. Payouts are commonly made around the end of the month following the sales month, so February's sales are paid by late March. There is often a payout minimum of roughly 100 USD before a payment is released.

Funds reach you by ACH if your studio banks in the US, or by USD SWIFT wire if you are outside it. For a euro or sterling studio, that USD-only wire introduces a currency conversion on every single payout unless you can receive and hold US Dollars directly.

Why fragmented inflows are the real pain

Put these together and the problem becomes obvious. One title might earn on a threshold-based app store (paid once a threshold is met), a fixed-date app store (paid from mid-month), and a PC storefront (paid around month-end, in USD only) in the same month. Each inflow lands on a different day, in a potentially different currency, after a different reporting lag.

For a studio with several titles across several stores, that is a dozen or more separate, time-shifted streams. Forecasting runway, reconciling gross against net, and knowing your true available balance all get harder the more storefronts you add.

How Altery fits

Altery gives your studio multi-currency business accounts that can hold USD, EUR and GBP balances side by side, so USD storefront wires and your European storefront payouts can land without forcing an immediate conversion. You convert on your own timeline rather than at the moment each payout arrives.

Real-time balances and categorised spend make it easier to see what has actually cleared from each store, and multi-entity management helps if you run separate companies per region or per IP. Altery is not a bank, and this is general information rather than financial advice; always check each storefront's own developer documentation for current thresholds and dates.

Frequently asked questions