#va strike

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Got it? Good. Here’s the situation; Most generative AI, which is a whole other can of worms, are proven to have been trained on stolen work. SAG AFTRA has been on strike for better compensation, but also to ensure companies don’t use AI to steal their livelihood. “The terms and conditions involving rights to digitally simulate a performer to create new performances must be bargained with the union”, said straight from the SAG AFTRA website.

The first wave of these strikes started early May of 2023 with the Writers Guild of America fighting against the use of ChatGPT, which was built on their own work without consent. July of the same year, the screenwriters were joined by SAG AFTRA. This was historical, the first time since the 1960s that both the Writers and Actors were on strike, halting Hollywood to a complete standstill. The end of that strike resulted in healthcare and residual pay for workers in the movie and TV industry. The 2023 Writers Guild strike ended 2 months after it started and the SAG AFTRA strike ended 2 months after that, both with amicable contracts signed by a number of big production studios in America, which sets a good precedent for AI protections in any future contracts; see how that works?

Now, throughout all of that, the Writers Guild and SAG AFTRA were very professional and forthright with information to the public. We knew WHY they were striking, we knew WHO they were striking against, and we knew WHAT could end the strike. Plain and simple. The same cannot be said about the current video game strike. SAG AFTRA as an organization has essentially gone mute and refuse to address the public the way they did with the screen actor strike. They’re just letting the voice actors fend for themselves and continually put their foot in their mouth. Surely it’s not just voice actors being more immature than screen actors. It’s almost as if the video game performers were an after thought to SAG AFTRA, striking a full year later; let alone that the placeholder interim agreement and the Taft Hartley simply do not work for live service games.

I suppose another part of the difficulty is who, exactly, are they striking against. Here’s where I finally start yelling about the Genshin VA situation. After SAG AFTRA announced a video game strike, Formosa, a third party company for post production audio, allegedly went behind SAG AFTRA’s back to provide non-union voice actors for League of Legends. So, SAG AFTRA is now disallowing their members from working with Formosa or League of Legends until further notice. This is important info for us because Formosa was also the production company handling Genshin Impact’s English voice recordings since it’s launch. If you remember, around December 2022, Formosa stopped paying Corrina, Paimon’s voice actor, and hadn’t paid them for over half a year by the time they publicly mentioned it. Y’know, Paimon, Genshin’s lovable mascot that doesn’t shut up? Her voice actor wasn’t being compensated for months on end. Because of Formosa’s breach of contract, Hoyoverse was able to move Corrina to a different recording studio and last I remember were in the process of moving the rest of the English cast over.

But that was over a year ago, before SAG AFTRA ever even went on strike or had beef with Formosa, so what gives?! The confusion caused by the English VAs have only complicated the situation to an ungodly degree, but I guess it’s better than the radio silence we were getting? The only actors that seem to know what they’re talking about are Alejandro Saab, Khoi Dao, and Joe Zieja. It’s like the rest don’t understand what’s going on either, just doing what they’re told like sheep but instead of just admitting it, they speak confidently wrong and end up contradicting each other repeatedly. It’s infuriating. I’m nosy, I wanna know what’s going on!

Based on everything said and done, I believe it ultimately still has to do with Formosa Interactive. The VAs, despite refusing to say it for some reason, are specifically striking against Formosa, which is the middleman between most of the Genshin English cast and Hoyoverse. But they’re all still stuck in a contract with Formosa that they can’t just break and run to another studio for one reason or another. Corrina was able to break their contract because Formosa broke it first. Contracts of that nature typically last per project or annually for ongoing projects like TV shows. Honkai Star Rail goes through Rocket Sound and Zenless Zone Zero goes through Cadence Studios and neither of them seem to be going through what Genshin is going through despite sharing voice actors. Again, this is mostly speculation based on all the info I have, which isn’t a lot because everyone involved is so cagey for no reason and yet when they do talk it’s like they themselves are missing just as much information as us, if not more. Like, I still don’t know, for sure, what production company Corrina was moved to.