SAG-AFTRA and Game Companies Reach Tentative Agreement

Published: September 25, 2017 8:41 PM /

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SAG-AFTRA Black

After nearly a year on strike, the actor's guild SAG-AFTRA and 11 unspecified video game companies have reached a tentative agreement regarding voice actor's pay and working conditions. The agreement addresses many of the complaints SAG-AFTRA raised last year. Their announcement on the matter focuses first on a bonus payment made to voice actors, based on the number of sessions, with it starting at $75 for one session, and going up to $2100 after a total of 10 sessions worked. This notably, is not the contingent based compensation that SAG-AFTRA originally sought but instead the additional compensation that the companies countered with.

Another big request that SAG-AFTRA had was increased transparency. This included wanting to know the codename of the project an actor was working on, as well as some general broad stroke details. This has been reached with the agreement including, according to the SAG-AFTRA lead negotiator Ray Rodriguez, the requirement for companies to provide codenames, the genre of the title, whether it's based on an existing intellectual property, and whether the actor is reprising a previous role. Additionally, companies need to tell the actors whether there will be any 'unusual terminology', profanity or racial slurs, any content of a sexual or violent nature, and perhaps most importantly, if there are any stunts required.

The companies have also pledged to continue working with SAG-AFTRA in the area of vocal stress throughout the term of the agreement. SAG-AFTRA President Gabrielle Carteris commented on the agreement saying, "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."

Previously, SAG-AFTRA had claimed that 20 companies for over 30 projects had reached separate agreements with the union. How those agreements would interact with this one isn't known at this time. This tentative agreement needs to be ratified at the SAG-AFTRA meeting in October.

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Don Parsons
| Senior Writer

A longtime lover of speculative fiction, in almost all its forms, Don joined TechRaptor in 2014 on a whim sending in an application as he was looking for… More about Don