A little more than A month after Screen Actors Guild chief negotiator and executive director Duncan Crabtree-Ireland called for a strike against video game companies, 80 games have agreed to tiered budget agreements or interim agreements, which include “protecting healthy AI.”
“We applaud the video game companies who have signed on to our interim, tiered budget agreement,” Crabtree-Ireland said in a statement. “They are not only doing the right thing for their workers, they are also helping to preserve the artistry and human creativity that fuels interactive stories.”
“These agreements indicate that the video game companies in the collective bargaining group do not represent the will of the larger video game industry,” Crabtree-Ireland continued. “The fact that so many companies are happy to agree to our AI terms demonstrates that these terms are not only reasonable, but also viable and sustainable for businesses.”
While not all the video game companies that agreed to the agreement have been named, representatives from Little Bat Games and Studio Wildcard have issued statements in support of the agreement. The video game strike began on July 26 after 18 months of negotiations.
Video game companies affected by the shutdown include Insomniac Games Inc., WB Games Inc., Epic Games Inc., Activision Productions Inc., Blindlight LLC, Electronic Arts Productions Inc., Formosa Interactive LLC, Take 2 Productions Inc., VoiceWorks Productions Inc., and Disney Character Voices Inc.
The union announced Wednesday that it has reached an agreement with video game developer Lightspeed LA to operate under a temporary interactive media agreement.
The Interactive Media Agreement, which protects about 2,600 voice and motion capture artists in the video game industry, expires in November 2022. In the latest contract negotiations, video game artists are seeking approval to create AI duplicates, or have their voices and likenesses used using AI, and compensation for the use.
