After nearly a year, the SAG-AFTRA voice actors strike against the video game industry has ended.
SAG-AFTRA made the announcement on their website:
In national voting completed today, SAG-AFTRA members approved the 2025 SAG-AFTRA Interactive Media Agreement by a vote of 95.04% to 4.96%, ratifying the deal and concluding the video game strike, which had already been suspended pending ratification.
The agreement provides compounded increases in performer compensation at a rate of 15.17% upon ratification plus additional 3% increases in November 2025, November 2026 and November 2027. Additionally, the overtime rate maximum for overscale performers will now be based on double scale. The health & retirement contribution rates to the AFTRA Retirement Fund will now be raised from 16.5% to 17% and then to 17.5% in October 2026.
The new contract also accomplishes performer safety guardrails and gains around A.I., including consent and disclosure requirements for A.I. digital replica use and the ability for performers to suspend consent for the generation of new material during a strike.
The strike started in July 2024 and seemed to have been indefinitely extended over disagreements between the union and the video game companies on the AI provisions. While the public had mostly sided with the voice actor’s union, that sentiment surprisingly flipped over controversies surrounding Genshin Impact.
Genshin Impact wasn’t actually part of the strike, as Cognosphere did not have a working agreement with SAG-AFTRA, and its workers were protected by legal obligations from their parent company Hoyoverse, which is based in China. This arrangement also protected their English language voice actors in the US, but most of those voice actors attempted an independent strike action to convince Cognosphere to join SAG-AFTRA.
This backfired as Genshin Impact fans were angered by these voice actor’s conduct against one of their own, who was perceived to not have helped them work with SAG-AFTRA. The fallout of this controversy brought to light issues with SAG-AFTRA itself, including questions about how they treat non-members. Particularly, fans and their members themselves were questioning if they were holding up the talks to end the strike unreasonably. This was particularly irksome because many of the SAG-AFTRA members couldn’t afford to go without work for months, but they could not easily leave the union either even if they wanted to.
Last month, the strike was suspended after SAG-AFTRA reached a tentative deal, that turned into this agreement today. We don’t think it’s clear cut to say that the Genshin Impact situation caused this outcome, but maybe we should be more discriminating if unions can be 100 % trusted to work in their members’ interests moving forward.
