Gaming Store Starts Paying Employees In Meme Stock

GameStop (essentially the US’ version of GAME, for UK readers) has announced that some employees (specifically, Assistant Store Leaders and Senior Guest Advisers) will be getting an increase to their hourly wage, Kotaku reports. However, Store Leaders will instead be receiving $21,000 of GameStop stock, vesting over three years. 

In case you'd forgotten about 2021's GameStop stock saga, take a look at the video below.

This update was delivered in a staff memo sent from CEO Matt Furlong (shared by Stephen Totilo on Twitter). It also revealed that Store Leaders will be given “ the opportunity to earn additional compensation every quarter by hitting goals for performance-based equity grants”. There doesn’t appear to be any changes to their base pay, however.

“Stock compensation associated with this new model is covered under GameStop’s existing equity plan, which was approved by stockholders,” the memo reads. “Leadership believes the model accomplishes the dual goal of increasing pay for every Store Leader and instilling a stronger ownership mentality across the org.”

You might remember that in January last year, investing in GameStop stock became a whole meme, when Reddit users took it upon themselves to buy up as much stock as possible, in an effort to shoot down hedge funds’ plans to short their stocks, making them lose millions. A documentary film even released earlier this year, which explained the whole fiasco.

Totilo added that as of now, there’s been no word on how much GameStop's Assistant Store Leaders and Senior Guest Advisers’ pay is actually going up by. Currently though, it seems that there are no plans for Store Leaders to get a salaried increase at all.