With talks scheduled to restart on October 23, the Video Game Voice Actor Strike may be coming to a conclusion.
Following the consecutive strikes by writers and actors in 2023, it appeared that studios and artists had come to an agreement in Hollywood.
The 2024 Video Game Voice Actor Strike, however, has demonstrated that there are still unhappily rumblings between performers over the impact of new technologies in their professions, safeguards, payments, and more, even though agreements for movies and television shows were resolved.
In a hopeful indication that a deal may soon be achieved, SAG-AFTRA said that talks will resume on October 23 after they had stopped for a while.
The voice actors’ main worry, like with other recent labor actions, such as the Writers Guild of America strike in 2023, is the growing impact of artificial intelligence on their sector.
Given that numerous voice actors have recently issued warnings against AI replications of actors’ voices and performances without their authorization, the striking parties feel that the Interactive Media Agreement currently lacks sufficient restrictions on the application of AI.
After more than a year of negotiations that failed to provide a satisfactory conclusion, the strikes began on July 26, 2024, targeting all companies that had signed the Interactive Media Agreement, including Activision, EA, Insomniac Games, and others.
These negotiations now have the potential to conclude and achieve a settlement more quickly than the 2023 SAG-AFTRA strikes, as they resume nearly exactly three months after the strikes began.
The AI issue is currently at the center of these conversations, with other grounds of dispute previously settled. Performers who bring the most significant characters in video games to life should feel more secure going ahead if both sides can agree starting on October 23.