AltStore PAL drops its annual subscription thanks to a grant from Epic

By Jay Peters, a news editor who writes about technology, video games, and virtual worlds. He’s submitted several accepted emoji proposals to the Unicode Consortium.
AltStore PAL, a third-party iOS app store that’s available in the EU, is dropping its annual €1.50 (plus tax) subscription after receiving a “MegaGrant” from Fortnite developer Epic Games. AltStore originally charged the subscription to help cover Apple’s Core Technology Fee (CTF), which is a fee third-party app marketplaces have to pay for each annual app install.
Epic uses MegaGrants as a way to “sponsor the development of exciting projects that may not otherwise have enough funding to fully realize,” the company says. The grants are typically meant for smaller teams using Epic’s technologies to “bring bold, challenging, and insanely creative dreams to life,” but in this case, Epic awarded the grant for “innovation in app distribution,” according to AltStore.
AltStore didn’t share the dollar value of the grant, and the company didn’t immediately reply to a request for comment.
Current subscribers won’t be charged when their renewal date rolls around, AltStore says. The AltStore team also plans to “show our appreciation for our existing subscribers in a future update” but didn’t specify what that might look like.
Epic is also working on a version of the Epic Games Store for iOS and said earlier this week that the store, Fortnite, and Rocket League Sideswipe have been submitted to Apple for “final notarization.”
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