Reconciling platform revenue share across storefronts

Every storefront publishes how much you sold, but the money that lands in your account is always less, because each platform keeps a cut first. The catch is that the cut is not uniform: it differs by store, and on some stores it drops once your lifetime or annual revenue passes a threshold.

That means the same dollar of gross revenue nets a different amount depending on where it was earned and how much you have earned overall. To know whether you have been paid correctly, you have to reconcile each platform's reported gross against its net deposit, store by store and tier by tier.

Tiered revenue share on PC storefronts

Leading PC game storefronts commonly take around 30% of gross as standard, with tiered reductions at high lifetime revenue. The rate can drop to around 25% on revenue above a first lifetime-sales threshold for a title, and to around 20% above a higher threshold. There is often a one-off submission fee per app to publish in the first place.

The tiering is usually per app and applies to revenue above each threshold, not retroactively to all of it, so a successful title can have several months reconciled at the standard rate before later revenue is shared at a lower one. Your reconciliation needs to track cumulative lifetime revenue to know which slice sits in which band.

Alternative PC storefronts

Some alternative PC storefronts take a flat, lower cut — commonly around 12% on game sales. There is no sliding scale to track, which makes these the simplest of the PC storefronts to reconcile: gross minus the flat rate should equal net, before any currency conversion or withholding.

Because that rate is so different from the larger storefronts' standard cut, the same title selling on both will net materially different amounts per unit. Reconciling them side by side only works if you keep each store's share separate in your books rather than treating all PC revenue as one blended number.

Mobile app stores

The mobile app stores commonly take around 30% as the headline rate. Many also run small-business programmes that reduce the commission to around 15% for developers earning under 1 million USD per year, which covers a large share of mobile studios.

Enrolment status matters for reconciliation: if your studio qualifies for the reduced rate, the net you receive should reflect around 15%, and a deposit that looks like a 30% cut is a flag to investigate. Crossing the annual threshold can also move you back to the standard rate, so the correct rate can change within a financial year.

Reconciling gross against net

The practical workflow is to take each platform's reported gross, apply the rate that should have been in force for that period and tier, and compare the expected net against what actually arrived. Differences usually come from one of a few sources: a tier change you did not account for, a currency conversion on the way in, or platform withholding such as taxes.

Doing this per store keeps the picture honest. A blended margin hides the fact that a dollar of gross on a low-cut storefront and a dollar on a standard-cut one arrive as very different amounts, and that a small-business mobile rate is half the standard one. Clean reconciliation depends on matching each net deposit back to the specific store, period and rate it came from.

How Altery fits

Altery's multi-currency business accounts and real-time balances make the net side of reconciliation easier to see: each storefront deposit lands in the currency it was paid in, so the amount you compare against platform-reported gross is the true figure, not a post-conversion number. Categorised spend and balances help you keep each store's stream distinct.

If you run separate entities per IP or per region, multi-entity management lets you reconcile each one cleanly, and FX on your own timeline means a conversion does not blur the gross-to-net comparison. Altery is not a bank and offers general information, not accounting or tax advice; confirm current rates and programme eligibility in each platform's developer terms.

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