The SAG-AFTRA Video Game Strike scored two major victories this week

Over one month after the SAG-AFTRA video game workers called a strike on their collective contract, the Interactive Media Agreement, after failing to reach an agreement about the AI protections the document should include with a collective bargaining group which includes some of the biggest names in the industry. Recently, SAG-AFTRA has published a detailed comparison of their proposal against the bargaining group's counteroffer, clearly displaying how the latter document is filled with legal loop-holes that would rule out all but the most evident cases of AI digital replicas, allowing studios to do things such as using actors' digital replicas without consent (and potentially without compensation) for 'minor' work, such as trailers or promos.

Fortunately, the striking video game workers scored two major victories this week, as video games studio Lightspeed L.A. and 80 other video games have agreed to and signed interim or tiered-budget agreements, demonstrating that the position adopted by the studios and video games refusing to accept the protections outlined in the most recent version of the collective contract is not shared by the industry as a whole. The willingness of so many employers to sign interim or tiered-budget agreements has served as recognition of the high-quality work performed by the artists covered under the collective contract, and has provided them with essential sources of fairly compensated work.

SAG-AFTRA leaders, including National Executive Director Duncan Crabtree-Ireland, have praised these agreements as proof that their proposed terms are both reasonable and achievable. Many game developers have expressed statements of support for the protections, remarking on the importance of fairly compensating artists and protecting their livelihoods.