The developers of 80 titles have agreed to become members of SAG-AFTRA.
In a post on the union’s website, the organisation wrote that it had agreements from 80 games, including Ark maker Studio Wildcard and indie developer Little Bat Games. This follows SAG-AFTRA members going on strike over concerns about artificial intelligence. The union recently secured an AI protection deal for actors from Tencent’s Lightspeed studio.
“This labour action is about creating work with sufficient AI protections,” the union’s interactive media agreement negotiating committee chair, Sarah Elmaleh, said.
“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.”
SAG-AFTRA’s national exec director and chief negotiator Duncan Crabtree-Ireland added: “We applaud those video game companies signing our tiered-budget and interim agreements. Not only are they doing the right thing by their workers, they’re also helping to preserve the human art, ingenuity and creativity that fuels interactive storytelling. 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 AI terms prove that these terms are not only reasonable, but feasible and sustainable for businesses.”