Three months after going on strike over concerns over video games’ AI voice work, SAG-AFTRA is heading back to the negotiating table with the companies that signed on to the Interactive Media Agreement on October 23. Among the companies engaged in the talks are Disney, Activision, Electronic Arts, and Warner Bros. Games. The guild will also stage a picket line at the Warner Bros. lot on October 16.
“SAG-AFTRA and the convenience bargaining group with whom the union negotiates its Interactive Media Agreement will resume negotiations on Wednesday, Oct. 23,” the announcement read. “The convenience bargaining group includes Activision Productions Inc., Blindlight LLC, Disney Character Voices Inc., Electronic Arts Productions Inc., Formosa Interactive LLC, Insomniac Games Inc., Llama Productions LLC, Take 2 Productions Inc., and WB Games Inc.”
No further comment is available from either party at this time.
SAG-AFTRA announced the strike over the summer, saying that while it made deals with the IMA companies on nearly all issues after more than a year of negotiations, they couldn’t come to terms for protections regarding artificial-intelligence replication of voice actors and motion-capture performers’ voices, movements, and likenesses.
Back in September, SAG-AFTRA honed in on the Formosa Group on claims that the voiceover production company had sought non-union work via a shell company for a video game currently in development. In response, SAG-AFTRA filed a complaint with the National Labor Relations Board and expanded its strike to League of Legends, one of Formosa’s biggest games, which provides huge amounts of voiceover work.
In a statement shared with GameSpot, a Riot spokesperson said, “League of Legends has nothing to do with the complaint mentioned in SAG-AFTRA’s press release. We want to be clear: Since becoming a union project five years ago, League of Legends has only asked Formosa to engage with Union performers in the US and has never once suggested doing otherwise. In addition, we’ve never asked Formosa to cancel a game that we’ve registered. All of the allegations in SAG-AFTRA’s press release relating to canceling a game or hiring non-union talent relate to a non-Riot game, and have nothing to do with League or any of our games.”
The guild wants to guarantee that video game performers have given consent and compensation for any use of their work in any AI models for video games going forward.
“What we’re saying to the video game companies is, ‘Step up, do the same thing that all these other industries and companies have done, and respect human creative performance,” SAG-AFTRA general counsel Jeff Bennett said earlier this month. “Whether that’s voice or physical performance.”
