Genshin Impact voice actress Corinna Boettger claims to have quit working on the game.
On Bluesky, Boettger made this statement:
Thanks @paperbagboy.bsky.social for having me. But yeah I make the announcement here that after John got recast, that was the final straw for me & I told hoyo I was not coming back to record until they signed the SAG interim agreement, as I have still been dealing with my contract being broken again & again from them not paying me on time On a consistent basis, not being paid within the 30 days as my contract states. Waiting anywhere from 3-5 months on average for my paychecks.
Boettger went on to claim that other voice actors also had their contracts broken, and speaking about their desire to make Genshin Impact a SAG-AFTRA game, and add AI protections. Boettger referred to a YouTube interview where she first made the announcement, which you can watch here.
Genshin Impact itself isn’t under a SAG-AFTRA contract, and is not part of the video game voice actor strike by the union. Genshin Impact’s parent company in China, Hoyoverse, has to follow rules of the All China Federation of Trade Unions, which does provide worker protections, including AI protections. Boettger and some Genshin Impact voice actors were making an independent action by refusing to work on the game. However, they were not working with SAG-AFTRA or any other union.
This wasn’t properly understood by the public until controversy struck the Genshin Impact community. A few months ago, Cognosphere replaced John Patneaude with Japan-based Jacob Takanashi as the new English voice actor for one of their characters, Kinich. As explained in this video by Mujin, after the striking voice actors publicly criticized Takanashi, even calling him a scab, the US Genshin Impact players started scrutinizing these voice actors’ actions.
In an ironic turn of events, the voice actors themselves fell out of favor, as the players believed that they were misrepresenting or lying about certain details about their strike. Particularly notable was this tweet by Boettger, as the Community Notes revealed that even though she was criticizing Takanashi, she herself wasn’t actually on strike and still recording lines for her character, Paimon.
So this may not be apparent on the surface, but a lot of Genshin Impact players will actually welcome Boettger’s exit from the game. It remains to be seen if the striking voice actors can redeem their reputation with the community, perhaps if they made a unified and clear public statement? But no one will be surprised at this point if Cognosphere simply chooses to replace Boettger and other striking US voice actors.
