SAG-AFTRA, the union that represents voice actors, announced today that a tentative agreement has been reached with 11 video game companies. This should be the end of the nearly year long strike voice actors have waged in an effort to get properly paid and treated fairly for their work in video games.
The new agreement expands the bonuses voice actors will receive based on the number of sessions required to complete their work. Those bonuses must also be paid before the release of the game, ensuring the actors aren’t promised a bonus and left without. In addition, video game companies are now required to give more information to voice actors about the projects they’ll be applying for. Companies must now disclose the code name for the project, the genre, if the project represents an established property, and if the actor will be replacing an already existing role. This will hopefully give voice actors a better understanding about the jobs they’re bidding for, and it’ll alert them if a project contains potentially inflammatory language like profanity or slurs.
It’s nice to see a positive outcome to such a long term struggle for voice actors. Hopefully issues such as these can be handled before strikes are needed. If anything, the SAG-AFTRA strikes proves the absolute value of unions and why, especially in vulnerable industries, they are needed.
