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Industry News
2016/11

SAG Video Game Voice Acting Strike Targets WB Games With Picketing

SAG-AFTRA are continuing to strike the major game publishers. After first announcing the strike and then following it up with the picketing of the offices outside of Electronic Arts in California, SAG has now moved on to Warner Bros., Interactive Entertainment.

According to Blues, SAG-AFTRA have continued on with the voice acting strike against the video game industry with a picket that took place this past Thursday on November 3rd at 10:30am through 12:30pm between the morning and afternoon.

According to the update, they will be targeting Take-Two Interactive and VoiceWorks as well. According to the lawyer representing the game publishers, the SAG strike will have little effect on the publishers. Even still, they’ve been continuing to negotiate with SAG to bring home a victory for both groups.

Publishers have been willing to increase payrates for the voice actors, but SAG wants to secure residual royalties for voice actors instead of an upfront payment. Publishers have been unwilling to fold on the residual front due to the fact that a lot of people have argued that if voice actors get residuals, developers deserve them as well, since they actually do the real work on the games. Of course, publishers are not going to allow developers to get their hands on residuals.

So far, the publishers haven’t really flinched much from their current positions, but they’re continuing to work with SAG on the negotiation front, stating that they’re willing to budge on the pay increase and the stunt coordination. They’ve folded on quite a few points, but they’re not willing to give up on the descriptions of the roles for the games – unless to notify the actor what the genre and codename is and if it’s a sequel role to something they’ve played before – and, as mentioned, it’s still a no-go for the royalties.

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