348 Days on Strike: How Game Actors Won the First Big AI Deal

In May 2025, Fortnite players met a new companion: Darth Vader, speaking in the famous voice of the late actor James Earl Jones, generated by AI. Players could chat with him. Within days, the actors' union SAG-AFTRA filed a legal complaint against the Epic Games subsidiary that produced the feature.

The union was, at that moment, ten months into a strike against the games industry over exactly this kind of technology. Seven weeks later, the strike was over, and video game performers had some of the strongest AI protections in entertainment.

Why they walked out

SAG-AFTRA represents actors, including the voice actors and motion-capture performers who bring game characters to life. Its contract with major game companies, the Interactive Media Agreement, expired in November 2022 and was extended month by month while talks continued.

The sticking point was AI. Performers wanted guarantees that companies could not use recordings of their voices, faces or movements to build digital replicas that could keep "performing" without them, or without fair pay. Members voted 98.32% in favour of authorising a strike in September 2023.

The strike began on July 26, 2024, against a group of companies that included Activision, Electronic Arts, Epic Games (through its subsidiary Llama Productions), Insomniac Games, Take-Two Interactive, Warner Bros. Games and Disney Character Voices, along with several production houses.

The long middle

For most of a year, union members refused to work on new projects for the struck companies covered by the agreement. Some games were cast with non-union performers, and some projects were delayed or recast.

Talks continued through the strike. On May 13, 2025, the companies put forward what they called their "best, last and final" offer. It dropped a proposal that would have allowed unlimited digital replica buyouts, and limited the use of replicas built from a performer's work outside the contract to get around its rules.

Then came Darth Vader. On May 19, 2025, SAG-AFTRA filed an unfair labour practice charge against Llama Productions, alleging that it had used AI to generate Darth Vader's voice in Fortnite without notifying or bargaining with the union. The case became a symbol of what performers feared: a famous voice reproduced by a machine, in a live game, during a strike.

The deal

A tentative agreement was reached on June 9, 2025, and the strike was suspended on June 11. Members ratified the new contract on July 9, 2025, with 95.04% voting in favour. The strike had lasted 348 days.

The key AI terms:

• Companies need a performer's informed consent before creating a digital replica of them.
• Companies must disclose how a replica will be used.
• Performers can suspend their consent for generating new material during a strike.

The contract also includes guaranteed annual pay rises over three years and better compensation for union work.

What is still open

The deal is a floor, not a ceiling. It covers union performers working with the companies that signed. It does not cover non-union actors, performers in other countries, or the many other creative jobs in games, from artists to writers, where generative AI raises similar questions.

Enforcement will also take time. Consent and disclosure only work if companies follow them and performers can check. And the technology keeps improving, which makes it easier to use a few recorded lines to produce many more. We look at the wider AI picture across the industry in our report on AI in game development.

Why it matters

The strike mattered beyond games. It was one of the first long labour disputes anywhere to be fought mainly over AI, and it ended with written rules on consent and disclosure that other workers can point to.

For players, the difference is often invisible: the voice in a game sounds the same either way. That is exactly why performers fought for it. If no one can hear the difference, the only protection is a contract.

WGC's take: the performers asked for something simple, that a copy of a person should not be made or used without that person's permission and pay. That should be the starting point for every AI rule in games, not just the ones for actors.