Before I say anything, I would like to say that I am really happy to give you guys the best news that I can. Sometimes we talk about the highly anticipated games, sometimes we present you a couple of over-looked jewels, indie legends etc. But sometimes a point comes when we have to talk about some real life stuff. Most of the time, this doesn’t effect our daily lives and we just talk and comment on the news. However, sometimes that ‘real-life’ issue can have an impact on others’ lives. So, now we will talk about a serious business: the strike of voice-actors which started more than a year ago. It is now officially over in favor of the voice actors.
A couple of disagreements on ‘transparency and secondary compensations’ led to this strike. Voice actors wanted to have more control over what they did – or at least they wanted to have more information. Moreover, they wanted to be paid more for what they do. And now, as we can see on the announcement of SAG-AFTRA, they managed to get these rights.
The Interactive Media Video Game Agreement was approved by 90 percent of the voters. With this new agreement, voice actors will get bonus payment based on number of sessions they worked in. Along with this new bonus, voice actors will now have the right to demand “the code name of the project, its genre” and “whether the game is based on previously published intellectual property and whether they will be required to use terminology, profanity or racial slurs, whether there will be a content of a sexual or violent nature and whether stunts will be required.”
This is huge news for the voice actors of the games that we loved and appreciated. In that regard, SAG-AFTRA President Gabrielle Carteris said, “This agreement is the first step towards streamlining the work our members do in the video game industry. The deal includes significant improvements in the area of transparency and the payment structure ensures that our members are compensated fairly for their work. I am excited for what this means for our members moving forward.” And yes, we can clearly see that the working conditions have been improved significantly.
The agreement becomes effective November 8, 2017 and expires November 7, 2020. And with this agreement, the strike which was held against 11 different video game companies more than a year is over.
We hope to hear more good news for the gaming industry workers as we always appreciate what they do. And if I should say something about the big companies out there, I personally hope that this will be a good example for them to see if they do something wrong about their workers or not.
Stay tuned for more.
