With the arrival of iOS 17.4, Apple has taken a historic step by opening the doors to alternative app stores in the European Union, a move that is already starting to bear fruit and will soon bring us the AltStore. The AltStore, an initiative by developer Riley Testut, known for his Game Boy Advance emulator, GBA4iOS, proposes a new payment method in which we can subscribe to applications through Patreon.
Patreon as a subscription
AltStore is emerging as one of the first platforms to propose a payment model that differs from the credit card, PayPal, or phone bill payment offered by the App Store. According to TechCrunch, for now, Testut is focusing on polishing the errors and preparing for the launch only with his own applications, but sooner rather than later the store will open to third-party applications.
To access the first applications developed by Testut in AltStore, users will have to commit to contribute between 1 and 3 dollars per month through Patreon. Among these applications, it includes the Delta game emulator, which will be initially free, and the Clip clipboard manager, which will require a 1 dollar contribution. Later on, to access the beta versions of Delta and Clip, a monthly commitment of 3 dollars will be necessary, always through the Patreon platform.
This subscription model through Patreon can be interesting for some developers. In the App Store, Apple’s commissions are 15% for apps that bill less than one million dollars a year. In the AltStore, Patreon’s commissions reach a maximum of 13%. Beyond this, Patreon offers advantages such as the possibility of establishing reward levels according to the subscription we are paying (something like the Premium or normal that certain apps already offer in the App Store), exclusive blog posts for subscribers and other alternative content. In addition, it allows limiting the number of subscribers to prevent an app from exceeding the one million annual downloads that would trigger the payment, by the developer, of the CTF to Apple.
The truth is that while a 2% discount on commissions for the developer may seem small, especially when considering all the value that being in the App Store brings compared to alternative stores, the option will be there. An option that, through Patreon, will allow us to subscribe to the applications of developers who are already part of AltStore or want to join.
