SAG-AFTRA announced on Thursday that its scheduled talks with various gaming industry employers ended quickly and without an agreement being formed. The meetings--which began on Tuesday--were undertaken with the goal of renegotiating the terms of the current Interactive Media Agreement, specifically as it relates to pay, streaming rights, and use of artificial intelligence. After failing to reach an agreement, the following statement was posted to the union's website:
"SAG-AFTRA and video game employers concluded scheduled negotiations for the Interactive Media Agreement. No deal was reached and the current agreement will remain in effect while the parties make final efforts to reach a deal."
SAG-AFTRA recently voted to authorize a strike against 10 major gaming industry juggernauts, with 98.32% of the union's 160,000+ members voting in favor of the strike. If the aforementioned "final efforts to reach a deal" fail, a strike is almost certain to come next, impacting the following entertainment companies:
The news comes on the heels of the announcement that the Writer's Guild Of America (WGA) strike has ended, with union members reaching a tentative agreement with The Alliance Of Motion Pictures And Television Producers after a 148-day strike. The WGA will soon vote to ratify the agreement.
SAG-AFTRA's previous strike against gaming companies, which took place from 2016-2017, lasted 183 days. As a result of that strike, certain games--such as Life is Strange: Before the Storm, made use of non-union actors. In that particular case, original Chloe actor Ashly Burch was only permitted to consult on the character rather than portray her in the game.
AveDominusNox on September 30th, 2023 at 19:03 UTC »
I feel like it was always going to be an uphill battle in the video game industry. Actors and voice actors have a lot of pull in traditional film/TV. Nobody is making multiple mainstream movies Completely devoid of voiced dialog. Video games on the other hand. Plenty of games have gotten away with no dialog, starfox/ sims style chirps, generic grunts recorded by programmers. As plan A, never even considering using VO. The only games that will suffer more than average are the AAA multimillion dollar single player story driven games that publishers hate paying for anyway.
Upset_Programmer6508 on September 30th, 2023 at 16:53 UTC »
I would like it if my voices are real people and not all AI
Dix9-69 on September 30th, 2023 at 15:05 UTC »
It would be nice if Voice Actors got some protection. There have been a few actors who got snubbed in recent year by game devs that really broke my heart.
David Hayter - the iconic voice of Snake in the Metal Gear Solid franchise got kicked to the curb on MGSV so Kojima could finally have his “real Hollywood actor.” So we got Kiefer Sutherland sounding bored.
Then there was Valve replacing the Voice Actor for Alyx in HL: Alyx which was flabbergasting to me. Merle Dandridge rocked that role, not that Ozioma Akagha was bad by any means it just seemed a pointless change especially given their reasoning that they “needed someone who sounded younger.”
The worst part is neither of them found out until the games were announced. Not even a courtesy heads up, just thrown straight in the garbage.