SAG-AFTRA video game performers suspend strike after AI deal

SAG-AFTRA suspended its strike against major video game companies after reaching a tentative agreement with the bargaining group behind the union’s Interactive Media Agreement, instructing members to return to work on covered productions. The strike had begun on 26 July 2024, after roughly eighteen months of negotiation over a contract that had expired in late 2022, and had run for nearly eleven months, making it one of the longest labour actions in the union’s history.

Artificial intelligence had been the central issue throughout. SAG-AFTRA said game studios were pressing for AI clauses that would let them scan a performer’s voice, likeness or movement once and then generate new synthetic performances from it without further consent or pay, a risk the union argued was greater in games than in film and television because so much of a game character’s voice work is already recorded piecemeal for reuse. The tentative deal secured requirements for informed consent and compensation before a company could create or use an AI-generated digital replica, and gave performers the right to suspend their consent to such use for the duration of any future strike — closing a gap the earlier film and television contract had not addressed.

The agreement also included compounding wage increases taking effect on ratification and in the following years. It went to a formal ratification vote after the return to work, and members approved it by a wide margin. Together with SAG-AFTRA’s 2023 film and television contract, which had set the template of separate, informed consent for digital replicas, the video game agreement extended organised labour’s negotiated AI protections into a second major entertainment sector, again without any federal or state statute requiring it.