SAG-AFTRA goes on strike against the video game industry | Photo Credit: X/ @sagaftra
Hollywood video game artists have announced they will go on strike, pushing part of the entertainment industry into a state of shutdown again after negotiations for new contracts with major game studios collapsed over artificial intelligence safety.
This is the second strike for video game voice actors and motion capture performers under the Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, which will begin at 12:01 a.m. on Friday. The move comes after nearly two years of negotiations with gaming giants, including divisions of Activision, Warner Bros. and The Walt Disney Company, working on a new interactive media agreement.
SAG-AFTRA negotiators say the video game contract has made gains in terms of pay and job protections, but the two sides remain divided on the regulation of generative AI. Audrey Couling, a spokesperson for video game producers, said the studios offered AI protections, but SAG-AFTRA’s negotiating committee said the studios’ definition of who is a “performer” is key to understanding who will be protected.
“The industry has told us very clearly that they don’t necessarily consider everyone who is performing a movement to be a performer covered under the collective bargaining agreement,” Ray Rodriguez, SAG-AFTRA’s chief contracting officer, said at a news conference Thursday afternoon. He added that some physical performances are being treated as “data.”
The union said that without safeguards in place, games companies could train AI to mimic an actor’s voice, or create a digital replica of their likeness, without consent or proper compensation.
“We attack as a last resort. We have given this process as much time as we responsibly can,” Rodriguez told reporters. “We have exhausted other possibilities, and that’s why we’re doing this now.”
Cooling said the companies’ offer “meaningfully enhances AI safety.” He added, “We are disappointed that the union decided to back out when we were so close to a deal, and we look forward to resuming negotiations.”
Andy Norris, an actor and member of the union’s negotiating committee, said those who perform stunts or creatures would still be at risk under the games companies’ proposal.
“The artists who bring their work to these games create a wide variety of characters, and all of that work needs to be covered. Their proposal would be to rip out anything that doesn’t look and sound exactly like me sitting here, when in truth, on any given week I’m a zombie, I’m a soldier, I’m a zombie soldier,” Norris said. “We cannot and will not accept that a stunt or movement performer who does a full performance on stage next to a voice actor is not a performer.”
According to the games market forecaster, the global video games industry generates profits of over $100 billion annually NewzooSAG-AFTRA said the people who design these games and bring them to life are the driving force behind their success.
Last year, members voted overwhelmingly to give leadership the right to strike. Concerns about how movie studios would use AI fueled a film and television strike by the union last year that lasted four months.
The last interactive contract, which expires in November 2022, did not provide protections around AI but did secure a bonus compensation structure for voice actors and performance capture artists following an 11-month strike that began in October 2016. That work stoppage marked SAG-AFTRA’s first major labor action since Hollywood’s two largest actors unions merged in 2012.
According to the union, the video game agreement covers more than 2,500 “off-camera (voiceover) performers, on-camera (motion capture, stunt) performers, stunt coordinators, singers, dancers, puppeteers and background performers.”
Amid tense interactive negotiations, SAG-AFTRA created a separate contract in February covering independent and low-budget video game projects. The tiered-budget independent interactive media agreement includes some protections on AI that have been rejected by video game industry giants. Games signed to the interim interactive media agreement, the tiered-budget independent interactive agreement or the interim interactive localization agreement are not part of the strike, the union said.
