SAG-AFTRA Video Game Contract Talks Extended, New Dates TBA

There’s still no new deal, but talks between SAG-AFTRA and the major video game companies have been extended with new dates to be announced soon.

In the meantime, the guild’s strike against all Interactive Media Agreement signatory companies remains in effect.

“After three days of scheduled negotiations, SAG-AFTRA announced that Interactive Media Agreement negotiations with employers would continue, with new dates to be announced as soon as they are confirmed,” the guild said in a statement Saturday morning.

The two sides resumed talks on Oct. 23, almost exactly three months after the strike began. Among the participating video game companies are 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. on Oct. 23.

When the strike was declared in July, performers had been working on video games without a contract since November 2022. SAG-AFTRA said that while most issues were settled, negotiations broke down over protecting voice and motion capture performers from exploitation by so-called artificial intelligence.

The day the strike went into effect, Negotiating Committee chair Sarah Elmaleh and Interactive Agreement lead negotiator Ray Rodriguez explained that among other things, video game industry counteroffers were designed with loopholes big enough to effectively neutralize any agreed-upon protections.

Among them, motion capture performances would only be protected if a video game character actually resembled the actor — which would exclude the majority of video game mo-cap. And voice actors would only be protected if their characters’ voices sounded recognizably like their own.

In addition to closing those loopholes, SAG-AFTRA wants consent and compensation guaranteed for performers for any use of their work in any AI models for video games.

Naturally video game companies dispute this, saying at the time the strike was declared that they were “disappointed the union has chosen to walk away when we are so close to a deal, and we remain prepared to resume negotiations.”

Meanwhile, earlier this week SAG-AFTRA announced that more than 120 games created by 49 different companies had signed on the tiered-budget or interim agreements the union has offered since the strike began.

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