The GameStop NOligarchy Profile
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GameStop’s NOligarchy Score is 95.96 out of 100 — the highest mark in its sector, earned primarily by staying out of Washington entirely, avoiding shareholder payouts, and accumulating a minimal regulatory penalty record over the covered period.
Current Pillar Scores
Political Access
96.2
Wealth Extraction
95.3
Playing by the Rules
76.8
Score history — 23 quarters
Tier bands show where each quarter's score falls — no numeric y-axis needed. The dashed ring marks the year-over-year comparison point. Tap any quarter but the first to see its pillar breakdown.
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Political Access Grade: 96.16/100. GameStop filed zero dollars in federal lobbying spend and contributed nothing through a corporate Political Action Committee (PAC) from Q3 2024 through Q2 2026 (8 quarters — the two-year tracking period). The only political money on record is $2,000 in personal donations by individual executives, reported to the Federal Election Commission (FEC). For a publicly traded company of this size, that footprint is almost invisible.
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Wealth Extraction Grade: 95.25/100. No stock buybacks or dividends are recorded for the covered period, keeping shareholder payout pressure off the score. The drag comes from a CEO-to-worker pay ratio of 101:1 — meaningful on a human scale, even if GameStop’s executive earns far less in raw dollars than counterparts at mega-retailers.
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Playing by the Rules Grade: 76.77/100. A single workplace safety citation from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) in 2024 is the entire penalty record for the period. The dollar amount is small; the nature of the offense — putting workers at physical risk — carries weight the fine total alone doesn’t convey.
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The Sector Context: GameStop ranks 1st out of 12 among companies sharing its federal industry classification, Electronics and appliance retailers. Its score of 95.96 sits well above the sector average of 83.5 — an accountability outlier among industry peers, though in this case that distinction reflects absence of harmful conduct rather than scale of harm.
The Bottom Line: A Quiet Retailer Where the Sharpest Imbalance Is the Gap Between the Corner Office and the Sales Floor
GameStop reported $3.63 billion in annual revenue — yet the people behind its counters sorting trade-ins and ringing up controllers earned a median annual salary of just $17,376, which falls below the federal poverty threshold for a family of three. The company chose to spend nothing lobbying Washington and handed nothing to shareholders through buybacks or dividends during the two-year period, which is genuinely unusual for a public company. But restraint at the top of the power structure doesn’t close the gap at the bottom: a 101:1 pay ratio set against a poverty-level median wage remains the defining imbalance this data reveals. One OSHA safety citation rounds out a picture of a company in financial retreat, where the workers who remain bear the physical risks of a thinning operation.
No Footprint in Washington
GameStop is, by the numbers, one of the quietest major retailers in Washington. The Senate Lobbying Disclosure Act (LDA) filings show zero dollars in federal lobbying over the two-year period — no hired lobbyists, no outside firms, no issue areas registered, no bills cited. The company also ran no corporate PAC, contributing nothing to candidates or party committees through that channel. No former congressional staffers, agency officials, or White House alumni are on the payroll as revolving-door hires.
The only political money in the public record is $2,000 in personal contributions made by GameStop executives to candidates of their choosing, logged in FEC records. Those donations total less than what a store associate earns in a month. For a company with $3.63 billion in annual sales operating in a sector that intersects with consumer protection rules, digital goods taxation, and retail labor law, the silence is notable. Whether that reflects deliberate strategic restraint or the reality of a company focused on survival rather than influence is not visible in the public record.
A Pay Gap That Towers Over a Poverty-Wage Floor
GameStop’s CEO pay ratio is 101:1, as disclosed in the SEC DEF 14A. The CEO’s total compensation in the most recent reported fiscal year was about $1.76 million, while the median GameStop employee — the person behind the counter helping customers pick out games and processing trade-ins — earned $17,376 for the year. That annual figure is not a living wage in most American cities; it sits below the federal poverty threshold for a family of three.
CEO — MEDIAN-PAY MARKER
JANUARY
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passes the median employee’s full annual pay
1:36 PM · January 3
101× the median employee’s pay
At 101:1, GameStop's CEO earns the median employee's entire annual pay by 1:36 PM on January 3.
No stock buyback or dividend data is recorded for the two-year period from Q3 2024 through Q2 2026. Because no buybacks are on record, no per-worker raise calculation can be performed — there is no pool of shareholder payout money to convert into worker compensation context. That absence is genuinely notable for a public company: GameStop chose not to funnel cash to shareholders through either channel during this period, which distinguishes it from most publicly traded peers of comparable size.
One Safety Citation — and the Workers Who Felt It
Over the two-year tracking period from Q3 2024 through Q2 2026, GameStop’s regulatory record produced a single case: OSHA cited the company in 2024, levying $9,206 in penalties for a workplace safety violation. One citation is not a pattern — but the nature of the offense matters. Safety violations are not paperwork failures; they reflect conditions that placed real workers at physical risk on the job.
This is the median American household.
Two earners, a kid, a dog, $80,610 a year — the exact middle of the country (U.S. Census).
NOTICE OF PENALTY — HOUSEHOLD SCALE
ISSUED TO
the median U.S. household
BASIS
0.0003% of annual income
$0.2
the same share of income that $9,206 in penalties takes of the company’s revenue
GameStop's $9,206 in regulatory penalties is 0.0003% of its revenue — for a median household, the same bite as a $0.2 ticket.
That $9,206 amounts to a rounding error against GameStop’s $3.63 billion in annual revenue — a sum so small in corporate terms it disappears on the income statement. For the workers who faced unsafe conditions, the exposure was personal and physical, not financial. No public subsidies are on record for this period, so there is no government-grant-versus-fine contrast to draw. This two-year span is only a fraction of GameStop’s full compliance docket, which is available in its entirety on the source site.