Bangladesh-facing gaming brands talk a lot about tiers, retention, and loyalty mechanics—but the people behind any gaming ecosystem still have salaries and bills. If you’re benchmarking how VIP structures are typically presented (tiers, priority service, loyalty perks), krikya’s VIP page is a clean example: https://krikyatop.com/vip.
The case: closures that cut take-home pay in half
In mid-2020, a workers’ union representing employees in a network of 10 state-run gaming halls in Argentina’s Buenos Aires Province pushed for an emergency compensation payment after venues had remained closed for about four months due to COVID-19 restrictions and related decisions.
The core problem wasn’t just “no work hours.” Their take-home pay included variable components tied to the venues being open—particularly a staff fund connected to tips and a productivity component linked to a share of slot-machine profits (reported as 8% of profits across the provincial system). With doors shut, those components effectively went to zero, which the union described as roughly half of employees’ income disappearing.
The union also framed the dispute as part of a longer wage-pressure story and said it had been providing food assistance to the most affected workers while continuing to demand that the state meet its obligations.
Why this matters for Bangladesh-facing operations
Bangladesh (and Bangladesh-targeted businesses) has a large service economy where variable pay exists in many forms—tips, performance add-ons, attendance bonuses, and revenue-linked incentives. The lesson from this case is brutally simple: when variable pay is a big slice of income, a sudden shutdown can look like a “50% pay cut” overnight.
Investopedia summarizes the underlying mechanism clearly: “Tip income is a gratuity given, either in cash or non-cash, by customers to service providers.” — Investopedia.
When a venue closes (or demand collapses), the gratuity stream collapses too—no matter what the base wage is.
And Britannica’s baseline definition explains why these shocks hit wide and fast: “A pandemic is an outbreak of infectious disease that occurs over a wide geographical area and that is of high prevalence.” — Britannica.
What actually gets wiped out when venues close
Here’s a practical breakdown of the pay components described in the case and what a “compensation” demand is really trying to cover.
|
Pay component |
How it’s generated |
What happens during closure |
What compensation is meant to replace |
|
Base wage (fixed) |
Salary budgeted by employer/state |
Usually continues (sometimes delayed/frozen) |
Generally not the main issue |
|
Staff tip fund (variable) |
Player/customer gratuities pooled for staff |
Drops to 0 immediately |
Lost tip-linked income (in BDT-equivalent terms for Bangladesh-facing planning) |
|
“Productivity” share (variable) |
Share of slot-machine profits (reported as 8% system-wide) |
Drops to 0 because revenue stops |
Lost revenue-linked income |
|
Allowances / overtime (variable)
|
Extra shifts, late hours, special events |
Typically disappears |
Any recurring add-ons workers rely on |
Hard takeaways (useful even if you’re not running physical venues)
- If variable pay is 30–50% of take-home pay, treat it as “fragile income,” not a bonus. Build contingency rules before a crisis hits.
- Separate “loyalty economics” from “staff livelihood.” If you operate online (including brands like krikya), don’t let internal compensation depend on volatile metrics without a floor—traffic shocks happen.
- Compensation asks are usually about restoring predictability. The union’s demand wasn’t abstract—it was an attempt to replace income streams that mathematically cannot exist when operations are paused.
- Document the pay mix. The moment you can explain “fixed vs variable” clearly, you can negotiate relief clearly—whether the unit is ARS, BDT, or anything else.