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+--- Thread: Possible voice actor strike... (/showthread.php?tid=6900)
Possible voice actor strike... - Dark Jaguar - 24th September 2015
http://www.polygon.com/2015/9/23/9383633/video-game-voice-actors-strike-union-sag-aftra
Frankly, I say this will be a good thing. Voice acting contracts in video games don't seem to work the same way as ones for movies. The Silent Hill HD collection (which had a LOT of issues but that's not relevant here) had to get brand new voice acting. In the end, they managed to work out a new contract for SH2's voice acting, but weren't able to get a similar deal worked out with SH3's voice actors in time. This is bizarre, because rereleases of old movies never seem to run into that problem. I've never heard of a movie having to remove some footage because this or that actor didn't renew their contract. If that was even a possible issue, we would certainly have encountered it endless times by now. Just think of all the zombie extras alone! Along the same lines, we've got games like Dragon's Dogma and Okami who's rereleases had to remove the vocal tracks due to no longer having the license for them. Imagine Goonies having to remove "The Goonies 'R' Good Enough" from the credits for this reason.
No it won't!
These actors are fighting for the flip side. They basically want the same sort of eternal royalties that actors in movies and TV shows get, that steady drip feed that current game actor contracts deny them. In other words, this could really be for the best for the gaming industry. Just write up acting contracts the same way that movies and TV shows do them and it should be fine. This is the sort of "growing pain" the medium needs. Now, the key here is to be sure that such contracts are written in such a way that if they decide to have one of their deep sales, the royalties drop to match the $5 price point, and if it's given away for free, the royalties drop to zero. I'm pretty sure these clauses are built into movie actor contracts as well, it's just something to be aware of.