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About 300 people walked the picket line on Thursday at Warner Bros. studio lot in Los Angeles in support of SAG-AFTRA‘s strike against the major video game companies.
While primarily actors walked back and forth across Gate 5 — the closest to WB Games Inc., the subsection of the company that is currently struck — there was also fervent support from the WGA and IATSE. It was a scene reminiscent of last year, when SAG-AFTRA walked the line on the other side of the lot.
And just like last year, artificial intelligence is at the forefront of the conversation, which is not lost on National Executive Director Duncan Crabtree-Ireland, who told Deadline he was “disappointed and…frankly, a little bit angry.”
“I don’t understand how any company could look at what happened last year and think that we aren’t serious about making sure that all of our members are protected with basic AI protections, including informed consent and fair compensation, and this negotiation has really boiled down to that,” he said.
Unlike the film and TV contract strike, the work stoppage on the Interactive Media Agreement hinges only on the AI protections, according to Crabtree-Ireland and Interactive Media Agreement Negotiating Committee Chair Sarah Elmaleh, who say they’ve reached an agreement with the companies on every other provision. Last year, other concerns about residuals and wage increases were also sticking points.
In September, the union voted for a strike authorization with 98% approval, which Elmaleh says helped move the needle on some of the other concerns the committee had surrounding on-set safety and wages. Over the past several months, Crabtree-Ireland has hinted that a strike was probable and, in the eleventh hour last week as it became more of a reality, the pair say the companies once again tried to avoid a work stoppage.
However, “it was not enough for them to be clear, unambiguous, thorough, [and] proper in terms of providing transparency, consent and compensation to all performers for all types of performance, and without any back doors or ways to undo those three basic needs,” Elmaleh explained. “So when that was clear, if the imminence of a strike is not enough to get on the same playing field and to begin to discuss from that baseline of respect, then a strike is what has to happen.”
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.
But, as Crabtree-Ireland points out, many of these kinks were ironed out with the TV animation deal that the union struck earlier this year.
“We were able to make a deal with them with no strike in a matter of little more than a week,” he said. “So there is something going on with these companies, and I think they are going to find themselves increasingly isolated, because the studios, the streamers, the record labels, have all been able to make deals.”
Negotiations on the Interactive Media Agreement have been ongoing for more than 18 months, though these talks aren’t as consistent as those that occur between Hollywood unions and the AMPTP, where the parties set aside several consecutive weeks to bargain.
Instead, while talks were always considered ongoing, Elmaleh says “corralling this convenience bargaining group to come back to the table with a certain degree of speed” took some time.
In a previous statement last week, a spokesperson for the video game producers weighed in on the strike, saying: “We are disappointed the union has chosen to walk away when we are so close to a deal, and we remain prepared to resume negotiations. We have already found common ground on 24 out of 25 proposals, including historic wage increases and additional safety provisions. Our offer is directly responsive to SAG-AFTRA’s concerns and extends meaningful AI protections that include requiring consent and fair compensation to all performers working under the IMA. These terms are among the strongest in the entertainment industry.”
The spokesperson has not provided further comment on the strike. Deadline will update this post if/when they do.
The first picket of the Interactive Media Agreement strike comes one day after the Senate introduced the NO FAKES Act, a bipartisan bill that seeks to provide guardrails for the use of digital replicas and has received resounding support from performers and artist groups as well as the studios, record labels and agencies. Even some AI companies like OpenAI have thrown their support behind the bill.
“There are things that go on outside of the scope of our collective bargaining agreements, and that’s where public policy has to pick up,” Crabtree-Ireland said Thursday, adding that the bill can “give our members, and actually give everybody, not just actors, but all of us…the ability to control the use of our image, our likeness through digital replication, deepfakes, etc.”
No further pickets are planned at this time, though Deadline hears that more are in the works. It’s unlikely that voice actors will be asked to hit the picket lines every day, as the union did last summer, for a variety of reasons, including the fact that the Interactive Media Agreement only covers 10 of the largest video game companies, and voice actors can continue to take projects with companies that have signed tiered agreements outside of that contract.
Crabtree-Ireland assures that “all of the companies that are part of this bargaining group are equally responsible for the fact that there is not a deal.”
“The fact that WB Games happens to be the first, I can assure you, they won’t be the last. This action, even though it’s outside of Warner Bros. facility, should be viewed as directed at all of them, because every single one of them has a responsibility to come to the table and make a fair deal. And until they do, we’ll be holding all of them accountable,” he concluded.
