- SAG-AFTRA National Board is asking union members for authorization to strike against video game manufacturers.
- SAG-AFTRA must contend with employer avarice and contempt.
- The industry for video games is providing “a nominal dollar increase but a real dollar pay cut.”
Before negotiations resume later this month, the SAG-AFTRA National Board is asking union members for authorization to strike against video game manufacturers. The Interactive Media Agreement, the union’s inaugural contract with significant video game publishers, was extended past its planned expiration date last fall as SAG-AFTRA bargained with the publishers for crucial terms that its members needed.
The businesses, however, have not met these needs. SAG-AFTRA must contend with employer avarice and contempt because artificial intelligence is endangering the employment opportunities of its members.
SAG-AFTRA
In addition to an 11% retroactive pay rise, SAG-AFTRA is asking for 4% wage increases in the second and third years of the contract to account for inflation. It submitted a similar request to the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers as part of the continuing union strike against producers of motion pictures and television.
The industry for video games is providing “a nominal dollar increase but a real dollar pay cut.” As they continued, “our members will make less in real dollars in 2025 than they did in 2020 under the current proposal.”
The conversations are focused on safeguards against AI, particularly in light of performance capture technology, which records an actor’s motions and expressions and uses them to create more lifelike animated video game characters.
According to Duncan Crabtree-Ireland, national executive director and chief negotiator for SAG-AFTRA, voice actors and performance capture specialists need a contract that adequately compensates them for the value they add to the multibillion-dollar gaming sector.
The businesses engaged in the negotiations are Activision, Epic Games, and WB Games, whose video game portfolios include hugely well-known games like “Star Wars: Battlefront,” “Call of Duty,” and “Mortal Kombat.”
Changing it now would drastically alter how games are created, a source familiar with the businesses‘ conversations told CNN. On nine of the 16 suggestions made by the union, resolutions or provisional agreements have been obtained.
