SAG-AFTRA Says 80 Video Games Agreed To Proposed AI Terms, A Blow For Major Developers Amid Strike

Katie Campione
·3 min read

SAG-AFTRA threw quite the punch in the ongoing fight over its Interactive Media Agreement on Thursday, revealing that 80 video games and developers have now signed tiered-budget or interim agreements with the union to continue hiring its performers amid the strike.

The studios who have agreed to SAG-AFTRA’s terms include Studio Wildcard and Little Bat Games, according to the union.

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The guild also said that some games that have finished production — and therefore would not be subject to this strike or need to sign a new agreement — have voluntarily signed an interim agreement to retroactively provide AI protections for those works.

“These agreements signal that the video game companies in the collective bargaining group do not represent the will of the larger video game industry. The many companies that are happy to agree to our A.I. terms prove that these terms are not only reasonable, but feasible and sustainable for businesses,” National Executive Director and Chief Negotiator Duncan Crabtree-Ireland said in a statement.

SAG-AFTRA did not provide a full list of companies had signed agreements, nor did it provide context on how many had signed an interim agreement versus a tiered-budget agreement.

The tiered-budget agreements have long been offered to independent studios and are not currently struck, whereas signing an interim agreement means the studio is preemptively signing on for whatever the terms of the eventual Interactive Media Agreement will be, and it is agreeing to operate under SAG-AFTRA’s proposed terms in the meantime. All of the deals include AI provisions.

Deadline has reached out to SAG-AFTRA for additional details. This post will be updated if/when they respond.

The union called a work stoppage against 10 of the major game developers in July, when more than 18 months of negotiations came to a screeching halt over AI.

The 10 companies facing the strike are Activision Productions Inc., Blindlight LLC, Disney Character Voices Inc., Electronic Arts Productions Inc., Epic Games, Inc., Formosa Interactive LLC, Insomniac Games Inc., Take 2 Productions Inc., VoiceWorks Productions Inc., and WB Games Inc.

On Wednesday, SAG-AFTRA announced that Lightspeed L.A., founded by video game producer Steve Martin, had agreed to produce work under the Interim Interactive Media Agreement, which the union says includes “common sense A.I. protections.”

As Deadline previously reported, AI is the one and only issue at the crux of this strike, as the union has managed to find common ground with the developers on every other provision. More specifically, the union has said that the sticking point in these negotiations is encompassing all performers in any AI provisions, without loopholes related to whether an actors’ likeness is recognizable.

In video games, similar to other forms of animated content, motion capture performers and voice actors are often performing as creatures or other non-human characters that make their voice and likeness unrecognizable.

In a statement Thursday, Interactive Media Agreement Negotiating Committee Chair Sarah Elmaleh said: “This labor action is about creating work with sufficient A.I. protections. The sheer volume of companies that have signed SAG-AFTRA agreements demonstrates how reasonable those protections are. We are thrilled for our actors to continue working under fair union contracts with companies who know how invaluable our performers are to their games.”

In its most recent statement to Deadline, a spokesperson for the video game companies pushed back on SAG-AFTRA’s characterization of the talks, saying the companies “have worked hard to deliver proposals with reasonable terms that protect the rights of performers while ensuring we can continue to use the most advanced technology to create great entertainment experiences for fans.”

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