Actors are on strike again, but this time members of the Screen Actors Guild (SAG) are striking against the video game industry, after negotiations for a new contract governing interactive media and video games failed. The union began the strike on Friday, July 26, preventing more than 160,000 SAG-AFTRA members from pursuing new video game projects and hampering games already in development from both major publishers and smaller independent studios.
Negotiations broke down over disagreements over worker protections around ai. The actors union, SAG-AFTRA, is negotiating the terms of the interactive media agreement, or IMA, with a bargaining committee of video game publishers, including Activision, Take-Two, Insomniac Games, WB Games and others representing a total of 30 signatory companies. While SAG-AFTRA and the video game bargaining group were able to come to an agreement on several proposals, ai remained the final hurdle that led to the strike.
SAG-AFTRA’s ai provisions apply to both voice and motion performers with regard to digital replications (or using an existing performance as a basis for creating new ones without the original performer) and the use of generative ai to create performances without any initial input. However, according to SAG-AFTRA, the negotiating companies disagreed on what type of performer should be eligible for ai protections.
SAG-AFTRA contract director Ray Rodriguez said the negotiating companies initially wanted to offer protection to speaking actors, not those doing movement. “So anyone who did a stunt performance or creature performance, all of those people would have been left unprotected under the employers’ offer,” Rodriguez said. In an interview with Aftermath.
Rodriguez said the companies later extended protections to moving artists, but only if “the artist is identifiable in the ai digital replication output.”
SAG-AFTRA rejected this proposal because it would potentially exclude most movement performances. “Their proposal would eliminate everything that doesn’t look and sound identical to me,” Andi Norris, a member of SAG-AFTRA’s IMA negotiating committee, said during a press conference. “(The proposal) would leave movement specialists, including stunt performers, completely out in the cold, to be replaced … by soulless synthetic performers trained on our real performances.”
The video game companies negotiating the deal argued that the terms went too far and would require approval from actors. “Our offer directly addresses SAG-AFTRA’s concerns and extends meaningful protections for ai including requiring consent and fair compensation for all performers working under the IMA. These terms are among the strongest in the entertainment industry,” wrote Audrey Cooling, a representative working on behalf of the video game companies on the negotiating committee in a statement to SAG-AFTRA. The edge.
SAG-AFTRA's strike rules include a number of exceptions for striking companies and jobs, making it difficult to know the true scope of the strike, especially which shows it affects.
For example, work done under SAG-AFTRA's Tiered Budget Independent Interactive Media Agreement or an Intermediate Interactive Media Agreement is exempt from the strike. Additionally, a specific clause in the IMA called “shadow letter six” grants an exemption to games in production before August 2023. This means that even though Take-Two is a company on strike, Grand Theft Auto VI It is not considered strike work. However, members of the SAG-AFTRA negotiating committee have encouraged others to abstain from working on the games on the sixth parallel card.
“The sixth additional letter allows, but does not require, performers to perform services during a strike,” said Sarah Elmaleh, a video game artist and chair of SAG-AFTRA’s IMA bargaining committee in a TikTok video. “This language made its way into our contract for one reason only: to undermine our union’s most valuable tool: a strike.”
SAG-AFTRA's last video game strike was in 2016 and lasted 11 months, earning performers fixed pay raises, better safety guarantees on set and improved oversight to prevent vocal stress on voice artists.
