SAG-AFTRA members working in video games may be following the members of the Writer’s Guild of America by going on strike over pay, safety, and transparency concerns, after a unanimous vote on Sept. 25.
This is part of a wider movement by SAG-AFTRA and the Writer Guild of America’s members that is making waves in the TV and cinema industry. SAG-AFTRA members have been on strike for 74 days, at the time of writing.
If these members do go on strike, what video games could be delayed because of it?
What will happen after the SAG-AFTRA vote?
On Sept. 25, a quarter of SAG-AFTRA’s eligible voters almost unanimously chose to authorize a strike while the union started to speak with 11 video game publishers, with 98.3 percent of members voting in favor of the decision.
They’re renegotiating an agreement that was initially reached in Nov. 2017 and extended until this year. This decision was taken after unfruitful negotiations with those companies over the last five years, according to the union. The aim was to adjust the agreement that was written following a 340-day strike, the longest in the union’s history.
The main fields involved in the creation of video games are voiceover and performance capture, according to the union, as “companies remain determined to underpay performers while turning a blind eye to key tenets of performer safety,” the union wrote.
Concerns of performers in video games were strengthened by the inflation and the rise of AI use in the industry. Based on the lack of success of initial negotiations, a strike might happen and could last for months.
It’s essential to keep in mind that the strike mainly involves voice actors and motion capture performers, and not writers nor narrative designers. Those fields generally fall under the umbrella of video game unions, partly because most of them are employees and not independent contractors.
That’s why a strike in the video games industry would partly unfold independently from the SAG-AFTRA and Writers Guild of America (WGA) strike against the cinema’s trade association.
Which studios could be affected by the SAG-AFTRA strike?
Knowing which video games would be affected by a strike isn’t easy, because most performers, those in the SAG-AFTRA union in particular, operate as contractors. They usually work on several titles simultaneously rather than being full-time employees.
That said, the union is negotiating with specific companies in video games, which indicates those might be the most affected by a strike. Here is the list of the companies listed by the SAG-AFTRA:
- Activision Productions
- Blindlight
- Disney Character Voices
- Electronic Arts Productions
- Epic Games
- Formosa Interactive LLC
- Insomniac Games
- Take 2 Productions Inc
- VoiceWorks Productions
- WB Games
Most of those companies are high-profile video game publishers or are linked to the production of AAA games. All of them combined include countless major titles and licenses from across the industry, which means a strike could have an impact on US-based video game development.
All video games that may be delayed by a SAG-AFTRA strike
It usually takes several years (from two to six years) for high-profile publishers to develop AAA games, so it’s all the more challenging to predict whether releases could be delayed because of the strike.
Motion capture and voiceovers are specialties that function in a very different way than other parts of video game development, and shifting their schedule might be less challenging than other core parts of the game’s development, such as programming and game design.
If a strike happens to last for months, publishers will still have options to adjust their schedule and get ahead with the game’s development without some talents.
They might be able to outsource voiceovers and motion capture to non-union companies to get work completed—which is already done by countless developers in the country.
Finding new talent is time-consuming though, so this could affect the schedule of those that see most or all of their production done in the US. Multiplayer games and DLCs might be the titles that would have more chances of being delayed, as patch schedules are usually tighter for those releases.
Here is a list of such titles that could see their release dates delayed due to a prolonged SAG-FTRA strike.
Multiplayer games and DLCs
- Starfield‘s Shattered Space DLC (Bethesda, works with Blindlight)
- Destiny 2‘s The Final Shape expansion (Bungie, works with Blindlight)
- Overwatch 2 (Activision Blizzard)
- Diablo 4 (Activision Blizzard)
- Fortnite (Epic Games)
- Mortal Kombat 1‘s next DLCs (WB Games)
- Apex Legends (EA Productions)
Upcoming games
- Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League (WB Games)
- MultiVersus (WB Games)
- Call of Duty “Cerberus” (Activision Blizzard)
- The Sims 5, Project Rene (EA Productions)
- Tales of the Shire (Private Division, Take Two)
As negotiations only just began on Sept. 25, it’s still impossible to predict what can happen from now on. It’ll all depend on the companies’ response to the union’s demands.
