In October 2016, SAG-AFTRA, the Screen Actors Guild‐American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, proclaimed a strike against select videogame companies.
After almost an entire year of negotiations, SAG-AFTRA announced yesterday to have reached a tentative agreement on Saturday morning. This means that all voice actors are now free to resume work with their companies, which is the best news for gamers - for instance, Ashly Burch (who also voiced Aloy in Horizon: Zero Dawn) was unable to reprise her role of Chloe Price in Life Is Strange: Before the Storm due to this strike.
SAG-AFTRA President Gabrielle Carteris said:
This is an important advance in this critical industry space. We secured a number of gains including for the first time, a secondary payment structure which was one of the members' key concerns. The courage of our members and their fortitude these many months has been admirable and I salute them. We are always stronger together.
Keythe Farley, chair of the SAG-AFTRA Interactive Negotiating Committee, stated:
The bonus payments we have now are significantly larger now than what we had 11 months ago. And the existence of additional payments beyond your session fee is in the video game world for good, both in our high-budget and independent promulgated agreements. Those are the victories that this strike has brought us.
Chief Contracts Officer Ray Rodriguez, who had the role of lead negotiator for the new contract, added:
The new transparency provisions will enhance the bargaining power of our members’ representatives by requiring the companies to disclose the code name of project, its genre, whether the game is based on previously published intellectual property and whether the performer is reprising a prior role. Members are also protected by the disclosure of whether they will be required to use unusual terminology, profanity or racial slurs, whether there will be content of a sexual or violent nature and whether stunts will be required.
The National Board will vote on the new contract at its October meeting.
About the author: With over two decades of experience in gaming journalism, Alessio Palumbo has led the gaming vertical at Wccftech since August 2015. He started working at a young age for Italian websites like Everyeye.it, Gamestar.it, Nextgame.it, and Multiplayer.it before kickstarting the indie English-language publication Worlds Factory as its founder and Editor in Chief. In the last decade, he has coordinated the overall output of Wccftech's gaming section, managed PR relations, assigned reviews, produced daily news coverage, edited gaming content as needed, and delivered game reviews. Arguably, his trademark content is the long series of exclusive developer interviews that have been cited by Wikipedia and by the biggest news media and gaming publications. His passion for technology also makes him knowledgeable when it comes to gaming hardware and tech. His favorite genres include RPGs, MMORPGs, and action/adventure games.
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