Voice Actors Protest at E3

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Unbeknownst to the majority of the attendees, videogame voice actors held a protest outside the Los Angeles Convention Center during E3. They've been locked in a battle with major publishers over a new contract, with the actors requesting additional session fees when game sales hit certain milestones; once at 400,000 copies sold and then again at every 100,000 after that.

"To deny working-class performers their fair share of the tremendous profits their labor helps to generate is illogical, unreasonable and unjust," John Connolly, president of the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists said recently. "It is simply shortsighted to believe that consumers don't care about the artistic quality of the characters." ... "The union's demand for an equity stake, or residual structure, is unreasonable and not fair to the hundreds of people who often spend years developing a game," Howard Fabrick, an attorney representing publishers in the talks, said in a statement. "Voiceover work represents a small fraction of a video game's development and consumer enjoyment."
The current offer from the publishers is a 34% pay increase over three years (to $375 an hour), "raising overtime payments, limiting the number of voices that actors would be required to perform and agreeing to pay extra when a publisher uses a voice recording in another game." The voice actors recently polled its union members if they should commence with a strike. If the majority agrees, a strike could take place as early as two weeks from now.

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