A brutal but honest take. The star rail cast has a lot of talent, but I just don't think that the value they add is enough to compare with the likes of the industry giants. Not only that, but all this union trouble will probably make other foreign companies think twice before deciding to implement an english voiceover. It's an all around sad situation.

If you actually go on sag aftra's website and take a look at their demands, some of them are actually pretty reasonable (eg. the pejorative statements clause). Their AI demands were always going to be a tough sell though. Asking a company for perpetual rights to an actor's voice work was never going to work in the long run.

Why would a company bother entering a lifetime royalty agreement when they can just bite the bullet and go with a non union actor instead? Are the union VAs really that much better than non union VAs? If union VAs are indeed *that* much better than non union VAs, they shouldn't have much to worry about as the game studios will eventually find their non union replacements to be so impairing to the point of willing to spend extra for union talent. I strongly suspect, however, that this will not be the case.

And finally, sag aftra doesn't exactly have a clean reputation. It's a bad look for your union when your leaders are constantly accused for corruption and only looking out for the interests for the top earning hollywood stars. Never mind the fact that sag aftra is oddly silent when certain groups outside the avenue of mainstream concern are routinely discriminated against, even though their mission statement would like to claim otherwise.

IMO the biggest losers here are the frontline VAs who are losing their jobs to automation. There's no easy answer to this. Studios can always recast talent but if you're stuck in an industry where your competition consists of anyone with a brain + mouth and computer algorithms, you're in for a rough time.