Video Game Voice Actors Goes On Strike Against Video Game Publishers In Hollywood! Here's Why

Hollywood witnessed an official video games voice actors strike by the largest actors union on October 21 countering the many big video game firms. This action came in retaliation to the two parties failing to agree on how to compensate the voice-over artists and the motion-capture performers for famous video games.

According to reports by NPR, the video game actors at SAG-AFTRA have stopped working since Friday, effective 12:01 a.m. It includes the games developed by 11 video game publishing companies that went into production post Feb. 17, 2015. These game publishers in question are some of the well-known biggies in biggies of the industry, for example, Insomniac Games, Disney, Electronic Arts Production, Activision, and more. Several of the major refined games take really long time to get developed, sometimes years. It's then brought to the market, and a huge pool of actors is caste over that expansion process.

Chief negotiator, Scott J. Witlin of Barnes and Thornburg law firm states that the two parties were not so distant in agreement when the arbitration fell apart. He added that the only distinction lies in the interpretation and the worst part is that due to the video game voice actors strike many are going to be out of work. According to SAG-AFTRA, the voice actors do not receive remaining payment for their work on gaming and they rather receive a fixed payment of around $825 for a typical vocal session of four hours. Hence, the SAG-AFTRA actors are demanding a secondary compensation scheme that is, a performance bonus each time a game sales figure reaches 2 million downloads or copies, or get 2 million exclusive subscribers capped at 8 million.

However, the video game publishers are hesitating at the idea and are instead offering a 9 percent increment in the salary that would push it to a 3 percent yearly increment desired by SAG-AFTRA over a three-year term. An added compensation of up to $950 per game was also offered by the publishers that were based on the number of voice sessions worked on a given title by the artists.

The union rejected the companies' offer on October. 20 during the video game voice actors strike, specifying the existing compensation system as a freeloader model, reports Los Angeles Times.