SAG, AFTRA Decline to Strike Games Industry

Dachannien writes "The Los Angeles Times is reporting that the Screen Actors Guild and the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists have voted against going on strike against the video and computer games industry. The agreement reached between the unions and several participating companies, including Electronic Arts and Activision, increases minimum pay for voice actors to $695 per hour immediately, and increases contributions to the unions' benefits funds. Voice actors will not receive residuals on games that sell well, which was a major sticking point for publishers. While the vote turned out with a majority voting in favor of striking, supermajorities of three-fourths of SAG members and two-thirds of AFTRA members were required in order to cause a strike."

Comments

But voice acting is /hard/!

[yotto]

They totally deserve $700/hour for this.

Re:Let me be the first to say:

[KDR_11k]

They justify it by saying they're not working more than ten hours per job anyway. I'd say that clearly justifies making your grunt staff do the VA then.

If they can't afford to live on a decent hourly wage they should look for another job or go to Japan or something. Voice acting isn't a fulltime job, you're fully capable of working as, say, a coder at a dev house and only doing VA when they need it. Considering those "actors" usually do piss-poor performances the money is clearly not justified.

NOT $695 per hour

[porcupine8]

If you RTFA, it's $695 per four hour recording session.

Still, I'd take those wages. Of course, if you're a struggling actor, that might be all you make that month.