Video game voice actor strike ends after year-long battle over AI
The SAG-AFTRA video game voice actor strike is finally coming to an end. After a year of withholding work, the union has reached a new agreement for its members, allowing them to return to the vocal booth.
When a union goes on strike, members of that union are prohibited in the jobs they can accept. This has led to multiple video game delays, voice actor re-castings and in the case of live service games like Destiny 2, they had to release seasonal cutscene content while missing key voice actors, making for a rather bizarre experience when jumping into new content.
Now, all of that will come to an end. The SAG-AFTRA union had a vote and 95% of the vote was in favour of the new deal with game studios and publishers.
The new deal puts ‘guardrails’ in place around the use of AI, protecting real performers from having their work copied and replicated by publishers without any form of disclosure or consent. Moving forward, a studio will have to ask one of its unionised voice actors for permission and work out a separate deal with them if they want to release AI-generated content involving them.
The deal comes at a time where AI is taking over numerous industries across the globe. Previously, publishers were training their own AI-powered voice actors using the work of real performers. Now, they’ll have to actually ask and pay the person.
As SAG-AFTRA is a US union, this only applies to US-based voice actors. Unions in other countries are already starting to explore obtaining similar rights, like Equity, a union for UK voice actors. Speaking with Eurogamer, an Equity UK spokesperson said: “The UK cannot be the poor relation, especially when the industry and engagers here in the UK are supported by tax breaks. So we call upon the engagers to step up to meet the challenge to make the UK games industry the best it possibly can be for creatives.”
KitGuru Says: SAG-AFTRA voice actors can now return to working on projects. With all of this out of the way, I’m expecting 2026 to be a particularly big year for new game trailers, as many announcements would have been delayed due to the strikes.
