If a huge game has 100 voice actors and you paid them all $825.50 per 2 million copies sold (~$100 million gross sales if the average price is $50) that works out to 0.4% of the gross of the game, and ONLY IF it sells over 2 million copies. There is zero about this that should have any affect on the price of games given the small number of games that would actually ever have to pay royalties.

This also isn't going to make people like Baker, North, Hale etc. rich, it might result in a slight bump in their annual income if and only if they're attached to several multi-million selling games each year. Similarly, if a tiny royalty like this was paid to a salaried developer it would have very little impact since they make twice that per week, on average ($1,597).

What this DOES do, and it should not be ignored, is allows the voice actor who came in on a SAG day rate ($627.75 for 4 hours) to get a nice bump if the role they auditioned for and won was attached to something that made a phenomenal amount of money. Part of the reason there are so few major names in voice acting is because so few people can make a living doing it. Royalties like this are structured so that the people making the least money on the project have an opportunity to see some windfall if the project is super successful. If all the people credited as "Local Population" in GTA5 can make rent for another month while being working actors because they contributed to something that sold over 50 million units, I think that's pretty positive.

This is between two consenting parties doing a business deal: the voice actor and those paying for his or her services.

They probably should have set tougher terms. Everything they have there seems reasonable (as mentioned large voice casts can make that royalty payment sting but it's not that bad) which can come back to bite them if it actually comes down to negotiations. You want to leave some room to go down if you have to.

A lot of this stuff seems totally reasonable. For example, being hired to provide a voice but suddenly being forced to do mo-cap shouldn't be happening but it does seem super weird to me that the people who coded every day for 2/3 years, and did 16 hour days in the final months, don't get paid better but the VA who spent a day or two deserves what the coder's don't. The money demands sound like they are just trying to copy the SAG arrangements negotiated for movie actors and just jam them into video games, they really need to negotiate for what VA's in games deserve and not actors in a move.

I look forward the silver age of terrible voice acting.

Also, SEGA's Field Affected Transistor needs to change that logo. Who would hire that guy? What a fucking ham.

To be serious, I'm mostly pro-union, and I've seen enough interviews with voice actors on various sites to the point where you can tell that the marketing departments of many publishers think that these people matter to their audience.

So long as SAG's conditions don't stop indies getting their mother-in-law to act in their game (or Ken Levine from voicing his vending machines) I hope they get a better deal from all this.

Also, I hope this emboldens coders, artists, level designers etc. to consider unionising.

I also look forward to reminiscing about the great videogame strike of 2018,

Maybe now we'll get more games with JP voices and subtitles. I'm ok with this.

On the topic of the develoeprs/producers/artists unionizing. Doesn't that mean that most games will be at a higher price or that the seller, this being the publisher, would off set the cost of the union's demands to the buyers. This could be done just by flat out raising the price of games -or- raising price of DLC.

It would be like putting a tax on video games for the sellers. They would offset that tax on the buyers. Isn't this just, well, basic microeconomics? Also with the rise of price lowers the demand of the video games, least the AAA ones since we can see that Video game market is rather elastic.

@demoskinos: Yeah games might cost the same they did back in the 90's after you adjust for inflation. Your average SNES game cost $87.47 in 2015 dollars. Even 360 games cost $73.20 in 2015 dollars. Gaming is the cheapest it has ever been and another rise in game price would just be adjusting back to inflation.

I would love some big name not be part of this and go rogue like Jordan or Cunningham in basketball/football. Imagine if Nathan Drake was voiced by QB EAGLES...

I don't understand why this is coming up now. All we've been hearing about is how risky making AAA games is now, how narrow the profit margins are, and how many big studios are closing down and laying people off. It seems to me this will only accelerate the downfall of AAA gaming. Indy and crowd funded games continue to rise and they have no need to hire union voice actors, if they have voice acting at all.

More people know Wesley Crusher than Nathan Drake, IJS.

I think Telltale might end up being the most affected if SAG AFTRA members strike. Since their games are dependant on performances, they use SAG actors and they have an episodic release schedule so they are always recording. I would expect a strike to greatly affect their schedule.

I've always bounced this quote around about voice acting: "Man, they don't get paid enough"

Why are the voice actors of all people going on strike? That's like having the fattest person in an elevator complain that there isn't enough room.

I'd say they are entitled only once 90% of them deliver better lines. Most VO in the last 10 years has been awful.

**edit** also, i hope this doesn't end up in more union activity. those never do much good

all that aside im okay with it if it means better working conditions for the programmers etc - some places have it really bad -

@devil240z:It's actually 3300 for 8 million copies. Even more reasonable. Especially if you consider that most games don't even sell anywhere near that much. Only big profile games like the witcher or fallout will reach 8 million. Even a huge game like Mass Effect 3 may not even reach 4 million. Last I checked, it shipped 3.5 million copies. That's just shipped, so they sold even less.

They get $825 for every 2 million copies sold. This caps out at 8 million copies sold which add up to 3300.

Late to the party here, but I really hope they get protections for yelling/straining voice work. The lead voice actress from Excel Saga pretty much ruined her voice on that anime because there were no protections in place at that time. She wasn't in the second season because of that, and it sucked.

I bet rules would change pretty quick if the developers did coding for 8 hours but then couldn't use their fingers for the next week or two.